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Our Own Will 

AND 

How to Detect It in Our Actions: 

OR, 

INSTRUCTIONS 

INTENDED FOR RELIGIOUS. 

Applicable also to all wljo Ainj at tlje Perfect Life. 

By The Rev. J. ALLEN, D.D., 

Chaplain of the Dojiiinican Convents of the Sacred Heart in 
King Williamstozvn and East-London, South Africa^ 

toitl) a IJreface 

By Right Rev. J. D. RICARDS. D.D., 

Bishop of Retimo^ and Vicar Apostolic of the Eastern Vicariate of 
the Cape Colony, 





New York, Cincinnati, and St. Louis: 
BENZIGER BROTHERS, 

PRINTERS TO THE HOLY APOSTOLIC SEE. 

J-ONDON : R. Washbourne. Dublin : M. H. Gill «& Son. 
1885. 



Tbs I#zbrart 
OF Congress 

WASHIMOTON 



^^;\ 



60 



Copyright, 1885, by Benziger Brothers. 



LC Control Number 




tmp96 028032 




The author of this treatise submits it com- 
pletely to the judgment of the Holy Catholic 
Church. He does not wish to enter on any of 
the questions regarding grace that are freely 
disputed by theologians, his sole desire being 
to help those who are striving for perfection 
over some of the diflficulties that arise from 
natural faults and weaknesses. 

King William's Town, South Africa, 
July 29, 1884. 



PREFACE. 



This little book, which we have read with 
much interest and attention, seems to us to 
supply a great want, and we therefore wish it 
a large circulation. Though written chiefly for 
Religious, and those who aspire to the perfect 
life, it is full of plain and practical lessons for 
all who are in earnest in the service of God. 
There are books almost innumerable on the 
state of perfection written from the earliest 
days, when Christians abandoned the world to 
serve God in all simpHcity under the direction 
of a Rule of life sanctioned by the Church, down 
to the present time ; yet there are few com- 
paratively suited for the English-speaking pub- 
lic. The style of those we possess, translated 
from the languages of continental Europe, is 
often too exalted, or it may be too polished 



6 Preface. 

and refined, to satisfy the demands of a healthy 
appetite, and the grain of sound teaching is 
generally so much involved in sweet phrase- 
ology and gilded sentiment, carefully elabo- 
rated, no doubt, so as not to shock the delicate 
taste, that it passes through the mind with- 
out salutary fruit. The book before us is free 
from these defects. The author, like a good 
physician, having made a satisfactory diagnosis 
of a serious evil that affects many earnest souls, 
applies himself with a skill and determination 
that recognize no mere foolish sentiment to 
root it out effectually. No one can follow him 
in his simple and plain analysis of the symp- 
toms that is not impressed with the convic- 
tion that he has made the study of the will a 
subject of long and careful consideration. His 
attention is never diverted by trifles from the 
object of his pursuit. He sees it in all its de- 
formity and probable results. In watching 
with v/hat ease he flings aside the poor dis- 
guises which so frequently deceive the afiflicted 
patient, one is often urged to exclaim, — how 
true ! how unmistakable ! and so is prepared 
to admire without a murmur the stern treat- 
ment. 

There is, we believe, no other way than this 
straightforward course of detecting and out- 
rooting the delusions of self-love in the spirit- 



Preface. 7 

ual life. Nothing but the clear perception of 
the evil and its dangers on the part of the Di- 
rector can dissipate the suggestions of morbid 
scrupulosity, or give the deceived soul strength 
and courage to ask of God the grace to bear 
with docility the repulsive remedy. Who is 
there, however earnest in the divine service, 
who is not liable to be led astray by his own 
will? It lurks under the fairest forms. It will 
be found at the root of the most noble and 
generous purposes. Serpent-like, it will dart 
forth unexpectedly, and poison the best inten- 
tions. We are not to imagine, that because we 
may easily recognize the glittering foe in the 
case of others, even under an accumulation of 
rosy flowers of eloquent self-abengation and 
apparent humility, that we should therefore at 
once distinguish it in our own. Unreality, it is 
well known, reveals itself to the eyes of children. 
They seem to know by a sort of instinct as sure- 
ly as the well-bred hound, who really cares for 
them, and to distrust the affected kindness and 
honeyed words that cover the approaches of 
false friends. Yet these little ones do not at- 
tempt to veil their desire to grasp the tempting 
object that is held out to win their caress, any 
more than the dog will divert his longing eyes 
from the bone that is offered to secure his 
favor. The ease with which we see the beam 



8 Preface. 

in the eye of a neighbor, and the straining nec- 
essary to catch a glimpse of the mote reflected 
in our own, has, if we may venture to alter the 
position of the words of Sacred Scripture, been 
pointed out by infallible wisdom. We may 
smile within ourselves as we listen to the self- 
depreciating words of vanity patiently fishing 
for a stray compliment, and yet never heed the 
unfailing estimate which others form of our 
narrow-minded and over-sensitive jealousy. 
How few have the courage and the Christian 
charity to help us with gentle care to see our- 
selves as others see us ! 

This is one of the great blessings which a 
Religious enjoys in a well-regulated community. 
The Novitiate and the Chapter prepare her to 
hear the truth with patience, and dispose her 
to profit by the w^ise admonitions of the good 
Mother, who has devoted her most earnest so- 
licitude to lead her spiritual children to the feet 
of God. 

It is because we believe that this work of 
Father Allen will greatly help on this practical 
perfection of the Religious life, that we wish it 
to be largely read. And it is because we are 
convinced that it will open the eyes of good 
Christians living in the world to many defects 
of character, unsuspected by themselves but 
painfully glaring to the eyes of others, that we 



P7^eface, 9 

desire for it a much larger circulation than that 
afforded by the cloister. 

A chapter of " Our Own Will, and How to 
detect it in our Actions'' will be a most useful 
meditation to all who desire ''to live holily 
with Jesus Christ/' Outside the walls of a Re- 
ligious house one rarely meets with any who 
are much concerned with our spiritual progress. 
Provided we are what is usually called ''good," 
even our most intimate worldly friends are per- 
fectly satisfied. How seldom is it our happi- 
ness in the busy paths of life to find that ''pearl 
beyond all price," the brother in Christ, who 
for the great love of God will tell us kindly of 
our faults. There are many enough to ridicule 
and to mimic them, plenty to assail them in 
our absence with unpitying scorn or unqualified 
censure, some who find a malignant gratifica- 
tion in trampling rudely on those weaknesses 
of character to which we are most sensitive. 
Self-love and wounded feelings too often pre- 
vent us profiting by the hard lessons of instruc- 
tors such as these. 

The little book full of practical wisdom 
Avhich, in our quiet meditation, helps us to 
know ourselves, fulfils the noblest task of 
Christian charity, so far as it can be dis 
charged by a mute guide, and is like the real 
friend — who patiently, and at much self-sacri- 




I o Preface. 

fice, and it may be the risk of grave offence, 
tries with a firm but gentle hand to remove 
the dross that renders the pure gold of honest 
purpose unworthy of the favor of heaven. 

•^ J. D. RiCARDS, 

Ep. and Vic, Ap. 

Grahamstown, South Africa, 
August 6, 1884. 



CONTENTS. 



chapter page 

Preface 5 

I. Introduction 13 

II. Theological View of the Subject 18 

III. Ascetic View of the Subject 24 

IV. Desires or Acts of the Will 32 

V. The Claims that God has on Our Will 40 

VI. Consequences of Refusing to Acknowledge the 

Claims that God has on Our Will 51 

VII. What Results from following Our Own Will 63 

VIII. Characteristics of Our Own Will 76 

IX. Our Own Will is Blind in its Desires . . 83 

X. Our Own Will is Puffed up in Honors 95 

XI. Our Own Will is Anxious in Cares 128 

XII. Our Own Will is easily Disquieted by Suspicions 155 

XIII. Our Own Will is more Desirous of Glory than 

of Virtue, and loves Reputation more than a 

good Conscience 173 

XIV. Our Own Will is more Miserable when enjoying 

the objects of its Desires than when it is with- 
out them 193 



I 



OUR OWN WILL, 



CHAPTER L 

INTRODUCTION, 

The Catholic Church teaches that no one 
can be eternally lost, except by his own fault, 
and that, no matter in what circumstances a 
man may be placed, he must never try to ac- 
cuse Divine Providence of carelessness or neg- 
lect in his regard, or to say that it allowed him 
to be too severely tempted, because there is no 
power in existence great enough to overcome 
the strength that we get by God's grace, to 
resist temptation ; that is to say, no power 
outside of ourselves, for we know that God 
never allows our free will to be interfered with. 
This Catholic truth is so evident, where it re- 
fei*s to mortal sin and final impenitence, that 
we wonder how there can be any one so stupid or 
so depraved as to deny it ; and it is just as clear 
wheie it refers to venial sin and to the efforts 
made or neglected to avoid it. In other words, 



14 Our Own Will. 

just as it is our own fault if we commit mortal 
sin, die impenitent, and are lost eternally, so it 
is our own fault if we commit venial sins, make 
little or no effort to avoid them, and thus die, 
although in the state of grace, yet without hav- 
ing reached the degree of perfection appointed 
for us by God from all eternity. 

The connection between this dogma and that 
of our free-will is self-evident and necessary ; 
for he who denies either the one or the other 
is guilty of either denying the unity of God or 
of making Him the author of evil. Horrible as 
this error is, it has had many adherents in past 
ages; and who can say how many it numbers 
now, when, outside the Catholic Church, the 
civilized world is divided between the most 
whimsical and varied forms of heresy, and the 
most revolting and brutalizing blasphemies of 
materialism and infidelity ? Anything, there- 
fore, that approaches to a wrong conception of 
these two dogmas is exceedingly dangerous, 
and any idea or opinion regarding our free will 
or God's goodness that places bounds upon 
our powers of resisting temptation or conquer- 
iigg passion, with the help of grace, is a decided 
foe to progress in spiritual perfection. 

Now such wrong conceptions and erroneous 
ideas or opinions cannot arise, at least so as to 
have any appreciable influence, in a soul that, 



1 



Our Own VVilL 15 

being fully penetrated with the spirit of Catholic 
faith, values its will only in so far as it is con- 
formable to the Divine Will, and consequently 
makes unceasing efforts to mortify and crush out 
every desire of corrupt nature that is opposed 
to the will of God. In other words, if we try 
to make our will belong to God, we shall get 
His grace and assistance ; if, on the contrary, we 
reduce our will to be a mere slave to our cor- 
rupt natural desires, and thus make it, as it 
were, our own property, to be used solely for 
selfish ends and without any reference to God's 
glory, then we forfeit every claim to the Divine 
assistance, and must take the consequences of 
being left to our own devices amongst the 
many enemies that threaten our souls. 

Hence the great object of the Religious^s 
life ought to be the mortification of her own 
will. To this end are directed the Rule and 
Constitutions of her order, the commands, ad- 
vice, and warnings of her Superiors, as well as 
the influence which the virtues, nay, even the 
very faults and imperfections, of her sisters 
should have on her. Yet it is not an easy 
thing to mortify our own will. It is born with 
us, it lives with us, it leaves us only when the 
soul leaves the body; it has a wonderful cun- 
ning in intruding itself into our actions and 
motives ; it is in reality the offspring of the 



i6 Our Own Will, 

devil, and it often puts on the appearance of 
an angel of light ; we think we have conquered 
and prostrated it, when some unexpected cir- 
cumstance makes it start up again, full of vig- 
orous self-assertion, impudent and rebellious. 
It tries to interfere with our holiest actions, it 
intrudes itself between us and God in the mo* 
ment of tenderest confidence, and, no matter 
how sublime an act of virtue maybe, no matter 
how severe a mortification we may inflict on 
ourselves, we must be always on our guard, 
lest our own will should come and, like a thief, 
rob us of all the merit and God of all the glory. 
There is no doubt, then, that a good Religious 
will be ever on her guard against the insidious 
attacks of her own will, that she will welcome 
every opportunity the Religious Life offers her 
of conquering and subduing it, and that she 
will submit all her actions to rigorous daily 
scrutiny, in order to see, as far as possible where 
her own will has tried to prevent her from 
doing the will of God. 

This self-examination, so necessary to the 
state of perfection, cannot of course be made 
without God's grace. Therefore fervent prayer 
is necessary, as well as blind obedience to her 
Rule and Constitutions and to her lawful Su- 
periors ; aiid where those two conditions are 
fulfilled, there can be no doubt that the good 



Our Own Will. 17 

Religious will be able to mortify her own will to 
such an extent, that it will not hinder her from 
attaining the perfection God has destined for 
her. But in order to pray fervently we must 
earnestly desire the spiritual good we ask from 
God, or cordially abhor the spiritual evil from 
which wish to be freed ; and in either case it 
would be of great assistance to us to have such 
a knowledge of the good or the evil as would 
help us in our self examination, and serve to 
render more intense the desires implanted in 
our souls by God's grace. 

The object of this treatise is to show the 
devout Religious where she can detect the 
work of her own will in her actions, so that by 
seeing clearly the harm that will does, she may 
learn to detest it, and be inspired with an ardent 
desire to live only according to the will of God. 



1 8 Our Own Will. 



CHAPTER 11. 

THEOLOGICAL VIEW OF THE SUBJECT. 

The great question of our salvation has been 
solved, finally and completely, by the Incarna- 
tion of our Lord Jesus Christ and its attendant 
mysteries. We can imagine no work of God, 
outside His own essence, more perfect, or more 
adapted to meet any call that could be made 
on it, through countless ages, by countless 
myriads of creatures. For no degree of human 
wickedness can exhaust the infinite merits of the 
Man-God. More than that : not only are those 
merits sufficient for the salvation of all the 
children of Adam, but also they suffice, amply 
and superabundantly, for their perfection. The 
merits of Christ, left to themselves, not inter- 
fered with in their working, and allowed to ex- 
ercise their proper influence on those for whom 
they were gained, ought to close Hell and ex- 
tinguish the fire of Purgatory. How is it, then, 
that so many souls are lost ? that so many ap- 
pear before God full of imperfections and venial 
sins, which prevent them from the imme- 



02ir Own Will, 19 

diate enjoyment of the Beatific Vision? It is 
through our own perverseness ; it is because we 
foully misuse a most precious gift of God, be- 
stowed on us by Him to enable us to receive 
the full benefits of Christ's plentiful redemp- 
tion; because we reduce our free-will to the 
slavery of our sinful nature, instead of elevat- 
ing it, by corresponding with God's grace, to 
that glorious liberty which finds its full expres- 
sion in the Blessed in Heaven. 

This vi^onderful faculty of will, intended by 
God to be the instrument of so much good, 
perverted by us into a means of so much evil, 
gives us a power of election, a freedom of 
choice. It is seated so deeply, or rather so 
loftily, in our nature that no mere external 
force can reach it ; nay, not even a spiritual 
force, though naturally greater or more power- 
ful than we are, can conquer or subdue our 
free-will — save and except God alone — unless 
with our own consent. So that, presupposing 
what the Incarnation has merited for us, our 
free-will leaves us absolute masters of our des- 
tiny ; no virtue required of us by God can be 
too difficult for us to practise ; no temptation 
to sin, no evil habit, too alluring or too strong 
for us to overcome ; so that, if we fail to reach 
perfection, such as is possible for us in this life, 
before we die, it is our own fault ; if we fall 



20 Otir Own Will. 

into mortal sin and die in that miserable state 
it is our own work — perditio tua opus tuiim. 

Nearly every form of heresy has assailed this 
doctrine of free-will, with the design of render- 
ing us unaccountable for our acts, and thus 
removing the restraint which the law of God 
obliges us to place on those desires which 
spring from our corrupt nature, and which 
would certainly tend to our utter destruction if 
allowed to work unchecked. 

The importance of our free-will is, then, eas- 
ily gathered from the fact that it is, in the pres- 
ent arrangement of God's providence, the only 
source of merit or blame in His sight. I say 
in the present arrangeine?it of Providence y because 
it is evident that we cannot merit in any way 
without the help of God's grace. No matter 
how good an act may be, if it is performed 
without any relation to our free-will it is, as 
far as merit is concerned, worthless; no matter 
how bad an act may be, if our free-will has 
nothing to do with it, it is completely harmless. 
The acts of persons who are asleep or in the 
delirium of a fever are merely material acts 
of themselves, and deserve neither praise nor 
blame, because the free-will is wanting to them. 
Therefore it is the will that gives character to our 
actions, stamps them as human, and gives them a 
significance which they themselves, in their mere 



Ottr Oivn WilL 21 

material existence, could never have. Further, 
the influence of the will is so great that its de- 
gree modifies the outcome, the result of every 
action, as far as merit or blame is concerned. 
A. half-deliberate act can never be, of itself, 
either a very good or a very wicked one. 

Taking all this in connection with the fact 
that no created power can compel or force our 
free-will, it is evident that God gave a mighty 
engine to man when " He placed him in the 
hand of his own counsel,'* and that He placed 
a mighty power under the control of each and 
every one of us who has the use of reason. 
But since this power sways our whole nature, 
it must have its seat in the noblest part of our 
being, for otherwise there would be no propor- 
tion between the influence it exercises and the 
position occupied by it. The will, therefore, is 
seated in the reason ; that is to say, in such a 
position that it can command the noblest as- 
pirations and the meanest desires that we can 
form. Hence it is of itself above all storms 
of passion and all attacks of temptation ; noth- 
ing of this kind can reach it, unless it deliber- 
ately lowers itself, and yields to the passion or 
temptation. Thus we can understand how it is 
that the saints, although they suffered much, 
both mentally and physically, were always con- 
tented and happy, for they kept the will free 



2 2 Oicr Own WilL 

from the miseries and failings of nature, and 
directed all its efforts towards God, giving in 
that way a supernatural and divine character 
to their lives which expressed itself in their 
wonderful peace and contentment. 

Further, the different faculties and powers of 
body and soul that we possess must act, each 
in its own way, according to the impulse and 
direction given it by the will. So that it is the 
will that gives character to the different acts we 
perform, while the powers themselves that we 
make use of in the action must be regarded as 
the servants of the will, bound to do its behest. 
And if at any time any faculties or powers of 
body or soul act without waiting for the com- 
mand of the will, or in disobedience to it, such 
an act cannot be looked upon as human, and is 
not attributed to us either to praise or blame. 
In the moral order, therefore, not only is the 
will absolutely free, but it has under its com- 
mand all the other powers we possess, and to 
such an extent that it can nullify, intensify or 
hinder the act of those powers, whether they 
are commenced with or without the command 
of the will. For instance, I may recite vocal 
prayers aloud, intending that others should 
hear me and praise me for my piety and devo- 
tion. There is no doubt that in such a case 
the use I make of the faculties of memory and 



Om^ Own Will, 23 

speech is a good one in itself, nor is there any 
doubt that this good act is completely nullified 
and rendered bad by the perverse direction 
given to it by my will. 

Besides this powerful and mighty will which 
resides in the reason, in the superior part of 
our nature, there is another power in us, re- 
sembling the will in its mode of action, although 
widely different from it in every way, as far as 
excellence and active influence are concerned. 
This power is seated in the lower part of our na- 
ture, and forms what is called the sensitive appe- 
tite, or, less properly, the sensitive will. From 
this spring natural feelings and desires ; that is 
to say, all the inclinations and tendencies of our 
being which seek to satisfy themselves with 
what is merely natural, transitory, and animal. 
So that we might compare it to the instinct of 
animals, because it is quite capable of acting 
without any reference to reason. It is self- 
evident that we can suppose many occasions on 
which this sensitive will engages in bitter con- 
flict with the rational will. 



24 Our Own Will. 



CHAPTER III. 

ASCETIC VIEW OF THE SUBJECT. 

In the last chapter we have explained cer- 
tain abstract truths regarding the nature and 
power of the faculty of will, as they are taught 
by Catholic theologians, and we have alluded 
also to the existence of a sensitive appetite in 
us, the desires of which are often opposed to 
those of our rational will. We have now to 
consider those truths in the concrete, apply- 
ing them, that is, to our own conduct, so as to 
have some means of noting, understanding, 
and even of analyzing the different spiritual 
phenomena of which our nature is the theatre. 
But since it is evident that this analysis, to be 
useful, must be practical, we can declare briefly 
the subject of the present chapter by saying 
that we have now to take the ascetic view of 
those truths, which in the former chapter we 
considered solely in their relation to moral 
science. 

Here we must again repeat that our free, 
rational will is always in our power, and that 



Oicr Own Will. 25 

nothing can force it or compel it to act in any 
given direction unless the Almighty Power of 
God. Now, since we know that God desires a 
free, rational service from us, we can easily see 
that He, as a general rule, does not so compel 
us to serve Him by supernaturally meritorious 
acts that we could not, if we wished^ perform 
or desire the contrary of those acts. I say, as 
a general rule; because in some exceptional 
cases the influence that God brings to bear 
upon the will is so powerful, that the will is 
fixed immovably in the love of God, as was the 
case with the Blessed Virgin Mary, and with 
St. Paul after he was confirmed in grace, al- 
though it is quite evident that this influence 
does not take away liberty of action from 
those in whose favor it is exercised. Nor is it 
necessary for us to enter into any of those ab- 
struse speculations which occupy theologians 
regarding the nature and efiicacy of divine 
grace in its relation to our faculty of free-will. 
Such questions, however good and useful 
otherwise, would be out of place in a treatise 
like this, in which our object is simply to ap- 
ply certain well-known truths to our own con- 
duct, so that we may be able to detect the 
weak points in our nature, our disposition or 
our character, and thus be always on our 
guard against any ideas, opinions or prejudices 



26 Our Own Will. 

that would hinder us from living as real 
Spouses of Christ should live. 

What we must therefore always keep before 
our minds is this cardinal truth, that as reason- 
able beings we must be responsible for every 
act, thought, and word of ours that has any 
title to merit or demerit, to praise or blame, 
supernaturally. And this truth holds good, no 
matter what may be the diversities of personal 
character or disposition. The Religious who 
is naturally good tempered, and she who is of 
a morose, suspicious disposition, are both re- 
sponsible before God for their deliberate acts. 
The degree of responsibility may certainly be 
effected by natural disposition, but not imme- 
diately ; for it is only by that natural dispo- 
sition working on the will that the moral 
character of an act is lessened or intensified. 
Thus the naturally good-tempered Religious 
may sin more grievously by giving w^ay to 
anger, than one who is of a passionate, irasci- 
ble temperament, but who tries to conquer her 
disposition by the force of the will, assisted by 
grace. And in the same way, the virtue of 
patience in the good-tempered Religious may 
not be so meritorious as it would be in one 
who can practise that virtue only by hard 
fighting against herself. 

In every case, then, the responsibility comes 



Our Own Will, 27 

from the will, and we have not to answer for 
defects that w^e cannot possibly avoid, just as 
we cannot expect a reward for good acts that 
we do against our will, and without any inten- 
tion whatever of doing them. This may per. 
haps help us to understand what is meant by 
the expressions weak will and strong will. 
We often hear those words used to denote cer- 
tain personal characteristics, certain qualities 
that are found in individuals, but which could 
not be affirmed of ^w^ry one, or of the whole hu- 
man race in general. So that it is evident that 
these expressions are used to define certain acci- 
dental qualities, affecting the will to some ex- 
tent, but leaving untouched the essential point 
— the moral responsibility of a human being for 
his actions. A weak will, then, means one that 
has every requisite power, including divine 
grace to practise virtue and conquer tempta- 
tion, but instead of using its power and cor- 
responding with grace, it gives way at the 
least difficulty, and yields to temptation, rather 
than undergo the trouble of combating it. 
Thus it deliberately and without any compul- 
sion submits itself to passion or feeling, causes 
the reason to give way before the sensitive 
part of the soul, and subverts the order estab- 
lished in our nature by the Almighty. A will 
of this kind is generally found in a Religious 



28 Our Own Will. 

of a melancholy, brooding disposition, who is 
easily discouraged and put out of sorts at the 
slightest difficulty; and it is a fruitful source 
of unhappiness, want of peace, scruples, and 
discontent. It is also a great mark of worldli- 
ness ; for it is characteristic of worldly-minded 
people to yield to every temptation that does 
not affect their position or prospects in life, 
because they have not a sufficient appreciation 
of the value of heavenly things to give them- 
selves any trouble for the sake of securing 
them. 

The distinction between weak and strong 
will, as it is generally understood by people, 
does not by any means touch a vital point of the 
Religious Life. Weak-willed as well as strong- 
willed people can get the grace of vocation, 
profit by or neglect it, be good or careless Re- 
ligious, and so either sanctify their souls or 
allow them to rot away in tepidity. It is a 
good thing for Superiors to know which of 
their subjects are weak or strong-willed, because 
they must try to have a knowledge of charac- 
ter in order to help the weak and restrain the 
impetuous. But it should not be a subject of 
either joy or sorrow to a Religious to have a 
weak or strong will naturally, provided she 
corresponds with God's grace. Personal quali- 
ties come from God's providence ; the good 



Our Own WilL 29 

use of them, or the due restraining of their im- 
pulses comes from God's helping grace, and 
the quahties themselves do not, as such, inter- 
fere with the moral responsibility of a human 
act. The ignorance caused by pride often 
tempts us to overlook this, and to try to ex- 
cuse our faults by referring them to some de- 
fect or excess in our personal qualities. No 
excuse is more futile or more opposed to the 
spirit and teaching of the Catholic Church. If 
we have confidence in God, or know what it 
means, we shall easily see and firmly believe 
that every natural excess or defect in us will 
be supplied or balanced by God's grace, if we 
only leave ourselves open to it, and do not try 
to hinder God's work by impatience or over- 
anxiety. 

Therefore we have no necessity of annoying 
ourselves about our personal qualities, or try- 
ing to find out what they are. We can learn 
all this from our Superiors, who wall certainly 
tell us everything necessary about ourselves, 
and who will, besides, tell it to us at the proper 
time; so that we are under no necessity of 
hurrying on, or of anticipating the work of 
God's providence with regard to our under- 
standing or to our will. 

But it may be objected that a weak-willed 
Religious has more difficult}/ in conquering 



30 Our Own Will. 

temptation than one whose will is strong". 
That objection cannot stand investigation. 
We beheve as Cathohcs that we cannot con- 
quer temptation or do anything supernaturally 
good without the grace of God, and that this 
grace is always given to us as we need, and of 
course in the measure in which we need it ; for 
'^ God is faithful, and makes with temptation 
issue." So that if we are really desirous of liv- 
ing as becomes our holy state, no personal de- 
fects or excesses will prevent us from attaining 
perfection. Besides, we must remember that 
we can rarely, if at all, hope to annihilate our 
passions in this life, so that they can never rise 
up in us on any occasion whatever. The real 
subjugation of the passions consists in steady 
opposition to them, in hopeful resolutions 
against them, which we must renew a hundred 
times a day, if necessar}% and in heartfelt, con- 
fident repentance if we fall. This supposes, 
too, that we do not grumble because God 
leaves those passions, those excesses or defects 
in us, although we are so anxious to get rid of 
them. There is a saying amongst sailors that 
if the weather were always fine every old 
woman might go to sea. It is the storms and 
exposure to rough weather that try the good 
seaman and show what he really is; and it is 
the temptations and personal defects of the 



I 



Our Ozvii Will, 31 

Religious that bring out the strength of the 
grace of vocation and the goodness and power of 
God. If by entering a convent we could at once 
get rid of all our failings, there would not be 
much merit in our lives, nor would our sacrifice 
be worth much. St. Bernard says that the 
Religious Life is a *' sweet martyrdom ;" and 
why? Doubtless because the Religious, desir- 
ing only eternal things, feels still that the old 
man of sin is strong, and that the human na- 
ture which accompanies us to the grave has 
much in it that is opposed to the grace of 
vocation. 

What has been said, in the beginning of the 
chapter, about detecting the weak points of 
our nature must therefore be understood in this 
sense, namely, that without annoying ourselves 
by useless investigations, or trying to find out 
more than God is willing to teach us, we always 
leave ourselves open to the action of His grace, 
or to the advice, warnings, and reproofs of our 
Superiors, which amount to the same thing, 
and be content with the knowledge we thus 
gain. In that way we practise confidence in 
God, and perform a high act of faith. 



32 Our Oivu WilL 



CHAPTER IV. 

DESIRES OR ACTS OF THE WILL. 

Supposing the importance and power of the 
will sufificiently explained and proved by what 
has been said up to this, and considering the 
many faculties of body and soul that depend 
on the will for the m.oral value of the acts per- 
formed by them, it is manifestly of great im- 
portance to know how to get the most we can 
out of our will for the glory of God and for 
our own perfection. If the will had not paid 
so dearly for sin, this would be an easy task 
w^ith the help of God's grace ; but unfortu- 
nately there are many consequences of original 
sin that render it often a difficult thing to turn 
the will to God, even with God Himself urging 
us to do so. 

Therefore, since the acts of the will are liable 
to be influenced, shortened or interrupted by 
causes that work against divine grace, it is 
clearly necessaiy for us to know something 
about the duration of acts of the w^ill, or what 
w^e might call the constancy of a desire. 



A 



Our Ozvn Will. 33 

The proper act of the will, and one that it 
must perform, as St. Thomas teaches, is to de- 
sire happiness. Of course this act is not pen 
formed under compulsion, but through a fitness 
between the movement of the will and the ob- 
ject towards which it tends. Thus the travel- 
ler desiring to get to the end of his journey, 
wishes for a horse, although he is not compelled 
to do so. It is then through a natural incli- 
nation that the will desires happiness. If the 
happiness, the good desired, is true, real, and 
appointed by God, then tlie act of the will is 
holy and supernatural ; if not, the act of the will 
has no claim to be considered as supernatural ; 
for any happiness short of the Beatific Vision, 
and not tending to it, is incomplete, deceptive, 
and most unsatisfactory for the faithful Chris- 
tian. In this way, then, we can distinguish two 
great classes of acts of the will, two different 
sorts of desires, which include every act and 
every desire, without descending to any more 
specific distinction, and without entering into 
any question regarding the controversy betw^een 
theologians about indifferent acts. Of course 
we do not mean that the will acts in different 
ways so as to put off its own nature, or that it 
performs acts unsuited to it considered as a 
natural faculty ; what is meant by the distinction 
given is, simply, that the direction of the act of 



34 Our Own WilL 

the will may be laudable or otherwise, the good 
desired may be either real or only apparent, and 
the moral character, the value of the desire 
varies according to its direction. We shall call 
these two classes of desires supernatural and 
natural. 

It is evident that, if the duration of the de- 
sire or act of the will depended only on its ob- 
ject, a supernatural desire would be simply end- 
less, because it tends to the possession of an 
infinite good, which no amount of desire or 
fruition could exhaust ; so that, if there was 
nothing to prevent it, the first supernatural di- 
rection given to the will by divine grace would 
call forth an uninterrupted desire, w^hich would 
last during this life, and be perpetuated in eter- 
nity. But we know from sad experience what 
the will has suffered through sin, how inconstant 
and inclined to evil it is, and how liable to in- 
terrupt its supernatural desires, so that it finds 
heaven and earth, grace and nature, truth and 
falsehood, exercising by turns their different in- 
fluence. Therefore, when we are considering 
this question of the duration of a supernatural 
desire, we must remember that we are speaking 
of a noble faculty, that has been degraded in- 
deed, but still receives such helps from God*s 
grace that it can work in the way and manner, 
and with the continuity of action designed for 



Our Own WilL 35 

it by God. We have, then, the following state 
of things to keep before our minds : the will is 
degraded by sin, but ennobled by grace ; it is 
weakened by sin, but strengthened by grace ; it 
is rendered inconstant by sin, but endowed 
with firmness by grace ; nature inclines it to 
evil, but grace impels it (without violence) to 
good. The opposing action of sin and grace, 
and of nature and grace is carried on during 
this life without interruption — " the life of man 
is a warfare on earth \' so that the question of 
the duration of a supernatural desire assumes a 
different aspect when we view it in a practical 
light, from that which it would present if con- 
sidered simply theoretically. Practically, then, 
a supernatural desire lasts as long as it is not 
totally destroyed by mortal sin, or interrupted 
by venial sin, whether we actually advert to the 
existence of this desire, or not, for there may 
be many moments in our lives when we cannot 
actually remember or represent to ourselves 
that we have a particular supernatural desire in 
view, although that desire is really there in our 
will. Nor do we touch on the controverted 
question of indifferent acts here ; for this treat- 
ise is intended for those who, living in a state of 
perfection, should have their wills constantly 
turned in the direction of their holy vocation, 
so as never deliberately to admit any wish or 



36 Oii7^ Own Will. 

desire that would even be merely indifferent to 
their perfection. 

The supernatural desire can therefore exist 
with much opposition on the part of nature and 
sin ; nay more, that opposition tends rather to 
intensify the desire, because grace is stronger 
than either nature or sin, and it shows it? 
strength by making use of the enemy's weapons 
against himself. This fact is brought out strong- 
ly in the Holy Scriptures. Because Tobias was 
pleasing to God, " it was necessary for him to 
be tried by temptation ;" St. Paul was eaten 
up by the fire of his supernatural desires. We 
can readily imagine how these desires were in- 
creased after he was rapt up to heaven and saw 
there the hidden things that may not be spoken 
of by man ; and yet what a sore and humiliat- 
ing temptation he suffered v/hen the angel of 
Satan buffeted him I In fact, in one way we 
might measure the sincerity of our supernat- 
ural desires by the amount of opposition we 
find the devil, the world, and the flesh offering 
to them, provided w^e overcome the opposition. 

We can draw a practical lesson from this 
that will help to prevent scruples, and will 
teach us how we are to confide in God, in the 
fullest sense of the word, and how^ we are to 
abandon ourselves to Him, as every Religious 
should ; the lesson is, that we must not expect , 



Oicr Own WilL 37 

impossibilities from ourselves, nor a degree of 
contemplation or a fixity of desire that cannot 
be reached under ordinary circumstances in this 
life. We must take things as we find them, 
and remember that we are poor, weak, misera- 
ble creatures, incapable of any supernaturally 
good work unless we are helped by God's 
grace, but that that grace is given to us so gen- 
erously, that we are enabled to sanctify every 
act of our daily lives which is not sinful; and 
so we have mucli reason to wonder that God 
has helped us to do so much good, that He is 
so f 01 bearing as to overlook the unavoidable 
imperfections of our actions, and that He is so 
loving as to accept from us even the faintest 
desire we produce by the influence of His grace. 
Our task, then, should be to fill ourselves with 
holy desires, and to make use of everything 
that happens as a means of lifting up our hearts 
to God, and to the eternal rewards He has 
promised us; for in that way alone can we 
arrive at anything like a real, lasting, uninter- 
rupted act of the will, by which we direct our- 
selves and everything we have to the glory of 
God and our ovv^n perfection. Nor should this 
task Ue a difficult one, generally speaking, for 
a spouse of Christ. Everything about lier 
reminds her of the special grace of vocation she 
has received ; everything tells her, as plainly as 



38 Oii7^ Own IVilL 

possible, '' that she has not here a lasting city/' 
and exhorts her to place her heart, that is, all 
her wishes and desires, in heaven, where her 
only treasure is. 

With regard to the duration of natural 
desires, it is evident that, although they may 
be lasting in their kind or degree, as opposed 
to the supernatural, yet their object must be 
always changed, so that the prevailing character 
of most natural desires is their inconstancy. 
Because created things cannot satisfy us, if we 
gain possession of something we have long 
coveted, our wish to have it is set at rest, but 
not the longing after happiness, which prompts 
us at once to seek for something else. And so 
continual disappointment causes continual un- 
satisfied longing. This is the case, not merely 
with outward, material things, but also with 
the various opinions and ideas that we form 
in our minds as individuals possessing certain 
personal characteristics. The desires that we 
feel to support those opinions and to carry out 
those ideas are sure to disappoint and mislead 
us, if by nothing else, by their very inconstancy. 
For instance, without anv ricrht to do so, I 
form an opinion of one of my Sisters, and 
imacrine that she should be treated accordincf 
to that ; after a short time, something occurs 
to make me alter my opinion, and of course I 



i 



Our Own WilL 39 

have to reform my judgment, and to submit 
to the influence of my own inconstancy — an in- 
fluence which has often a very depressing effect. 
We see nothing hke this in the lives of the 
Saints. They had natural desires certainly, for 
they were human as we are ; but they controlled 
them, conquered and sanctified them by the 
intensity of their supernatural desires. We 
have to imitate their example, and to be coura- 
geous in trampling down every wish or ten- 
dency of ours that would interfere with the 
perfection of our holy state. How we are to 
do this will appear afterward. 



40 Our Ozuii WilL 



CHAPTER V. 

THE CLAIMS THAT GOD HAS ON OUR WILL. 

Considering the end of our creation, it 
requires no proof to show that God gave us 
free-will that we might love Him above all 
thincrs, and love creatures onlv in and for Him, 
so as never to allov/ lliem to come between 
Him and the rights He has over our whole 
being. For, all creatures belong to God, and 
He alone has the right to dispose of them 
absohrcely. Now, if a Religious, with all the 
helps and graces of the Religious Life, is so 
fully penetrated with this truth that her great 
and only desire is to use her will, and every 
other faculty and power of body and soul, in 
the service of God, there is no doubt that the 
Almighty will take peaceable possession of His 
rights in her, and will lead her on in the way 
best known to Himself, and best suited to her, 
to the perfection of her holy state. But, if a 
Religious refuses to acknowledge this truth, 
or if, believing it, she neglects to act up to its 
teaching, what happens then? Simply, that 



Otir Own WilL 41 

she commits a crying injustice, by usurping for 
her own selfish purposes the will that God gave 
her to be employed in His service. For as 
Father Louis de Ponte tells us in his Medita- 
tions (Part L, Med. XXVII.), ^^ Our own will is 
that which seeks to satisfy our own taste, our 
own palate, disregarding for the time every 
other will, whether God's or our neighbor's. 
It is called owx ozvnwWX, because, although God 
has created it, that I might submit it to His 
will, I usurp and appropriate it to myself, as if 
it were my oivn and not God's creature, and 
therefore use it only for what pleases myself." 
Here we have the explanation and a sort of gen- 
eral analysis of every deliberate fault committed 
in a convent ; and with the help of this expla- 
nation a Religious ought to see and know what 
she does and whom she offends by every wilful 
violation of Rule or Constitutions, or by trans- 
gressing the commands of her Superiors. It is 
to prevent this gross injustice being committed 
against the infinite goodness of God that so 
much importance is attached in the Religious 
Life to the complete abnegation and subjuga- 
tion of our own will. But perhaps this is 
exaggerated. We know very well that God is 
absolute master of everything, that our state is 
a perfect one, and that our Superiors must help 
us to perfection by every means the Religious 



42 Oiir Own Will. 

Life affords them. But may we not overdraw 
the picture? May there not be many little things 
that we are very fond of doing or possessing, 
and that God will overlook, although they are 
not quite in accordance with our Constitutions, 
or with the arrangements of our Superiors? 
Our state is one of perfection ; but may we 
not aim too high? Perhaps the Almighty does 
not always urge His claims on our service; 
perhaps he concedes us the use of our own will 
in several trivial things, for which He will not 
exact an account hereafter. Our Superiors 
must help us on to perfection ; but are they 
obliged to notice every little thing? — Must they 
correct us for faults that we commit through a 
little carelessness ? Is God so very exacting ? Do 
the graces He gives in religion reach to every 
little thing we do? To answer all these objec- 
tions that are made, implicitly at least, by every 
tepid and careless Religious, we shall have to 
consider the origin of the claims that God has 
on our w^ill, and the reason why He has every 
right to require of us to employ it only in His 
service. 

These claims arise, 1st, from the fact that God 
has created our will. By an act of power that 
He alone can exercise, He called forth that 
will from nothing, and He preserves it in exist- 
ence. He has given to it its manner of being 



Our Own Will. 43 

and action, and He alone can prevent it from 
losing its power and its existence. So that it 
is His property by the strongest of titles — crea- 
tion. And He created it, too, for His own all- 
perfect purpose ; for it would be most absurd 
to suppose the Almighty God having an ulti- 
mate end in view that would be unworthy of 
His divine perfections, or less perfect than Him- 
self. By this title of creation and preservation 
the Almighty can claim every deliberate act of 
our will for His own service ; and He doeszVsXvix 
it too, because otherwise why should He tell 
us that we must render an account of every idle 
word ? What is meant by an idle word ? Is it 
not every deliberate act that we perform, with- 
out in any way taking God into account, to 
gratify our natural propensities and inclinations 
at the expense of the Religious spirit ? Such 
an abuse of the will means really that we turn 
God*s own power, as far as it is concerned in 
creating and preserving our will, against Him- 
self, and that we pervert to our own sole and 
exclusive use what God has created for His own 
wise purposes. Truly a crying injustice and a 
black ingratitude to be guilty of 1 Yet the Re- 
ligious who prefers her own will to obedience, 
even in small things, is guilty of this injustice 
and ingratitude. 

These claims arise, 2d, from acts, other than 



44 Oitr Own Will, 

creation and preservation, exercised by God on 
our will, which show forth His goodness and 
other perfections ; so that, illumined by the light 
of faith, we cannot doubt that every act of our 
will should belong to God. These acts of the 
Almighty Goodness pervade and give a charac- 
ter to our whole lives; they make us what we 
are, if we are worth anything at all ; and they 
enable us to reach the very perfection of our 
existence in the enjoyment of the Beatific 
Vision. Hardly had we entered into life when 
God took possession of us by Baptism. He 
had a Sacrament ready to meet us at every step ; 
the magnificent organization of the Catholic 
Church did not seem to Him too costly to give 
to us as guide, as teacher, and as friend ; nay, 
He even raised us above the level of ordinary 
Christians, and placed us amongst those who 
are especially dear to Him by the grace of Voca- 
tion. And how many helps do we not receive 
from Him in the convent that we should seek 
in vain out in the world ! Must we not look 
upon the advice, the warnings, the reproofs of 
our Superiors as so many acts b}^ which the Al- 
mighty, giving us proof positive of His hatred 
of evil, endeavors to draw us away from that 
which is sinful and corrupt in our nature, that 
His goodness may have more room to display 
itself in us.^ Yet when a Religious is fond of 



Our Own Will. 45 

her own will she disregards all these proofs of 
God's goodness, and sets up a false goodness 
of her own making, the creature of her selfish 
desires, before which she bows down in adora- 
tion, like the children of Israel before the 
golden calf. A worthy act indeed for a Spouse 
of Christ to perform ! Yet it is performed in 
every deliberate act of disobedience, no matter 
how small. 

These claims which God has on our will 
arise, 3d, from the acts of the will itself, which 
finds only misery outside of God, We need 
only consult our own experience to be fully 
convinced of this truth. Have we ever heard 
of any one who found happiness in creatures? 
Have we ever found it ourselves, although we 
may have often sought for it outside of God? 
The fact is, that the very nature of the acts 
performed by the will requires something infi- 
nite to satisfy it fully: there is nothing belong- 
ing to us that e>j:tends so far as our desires, nor 
is there any creature that can keep pace with 
them ; and why should God have given such a 
great capacity to our will if He did not intend 
to satisfy it, and how could He satisfy it unless 
by giving us Himself? Therefore, since He 
has created the will for Himself, His manifest 
intention is tJiat it should be unable to find 
any real satisfaction, any positive contentment, 



46 Our Own Will. 

unless in Him. So that He is entitled in 
strict justice to every act of the will, that is, 
to every human act we perform during our 
lives ; and if we try to defraud Him of His 
rights in this respect we are guilty of a crying 
injustice. 

Nor does He forget His claims or neglect to 
urge them. He has surrounded us with crea- 
tures who in their own sphere and according 
to their different capacities, remind us con- 
stantly that God is expecting something from 
us, that He is disposing of our lives for His own 
purposes, and that our lives belong by right to 
the completion of a grand scheme that He 
Himself has designed and that no one else could 
carry out. In fact, as far as creatures are con- 
sidered in their relations to ourselves, we might 
define them as visible exponents of the Divine 
Will, by which our Creator intends to claim for 
Himself all the homage and service that our 
will is capable of rendering Him. Foremost 
amongst these visible exponents of God*s will are 
our Superiors. They are invested with author- 
ity over us by the Catholic Church, the greatest 
power on earth, in order that they maybe able 
to insist more forcibly on our rendering to God 
the service due to Him, and to remind us more 
efficaciously that at every moment of our lives 
we ought to be serving God. Hence we are 



Our Own WilL 47 

taught that we have not to consider personal 
quahties or defects in our Superiors, nor hav^e 
we to obey them because their disposition or 
manner suits our taste: our respect for them 
must be founded on the authority they possess 
*' as having to render account for our souls ;** 
our fullest obedience is due to them because 
they represent the rights that God has over us, 
and because He has placed our Superiors over 
us that they may see that we do not neglect to 
render Him His due. 

Besides what we learn from creatures, God 
Himself often deigns to make known His will 
to us, and to tell us what He expects from our 
will. Hence come the many graces and in- 
spirations we so frequently receive. Do we 
not often hear the voice of God speaking to us 
in no doubtful manner, telling us what we are 
to do or to avoid ? Have we not often reason 
to wonder at seeing ourselves endowed with 
unexpected strength in some great temptation ? 
Are we not often astonished that we are able 
to meet some sudden shock, some unlooked- 
for trial, with a fortitude that we know we do 
not possess of ourselves? And w^e find the 
first real effect of this strength and fortitude 
in our will — -a fact which shows clearly that all 
these graces and inspirations are means by 
which God reminds us of His rights over us, 



48 Our Oz.^n IVziL 

and strengthens us so that we may give Him 
His rio^hts. 

Hence it is evident that giving the will to 
God constitutes its greatest perfection, be- 
cause we cannot imagine any perfection of the 
will outside of God, since, as we have seen, He 
has created it for Himself, and is always urging 
the claims He has to it upon our consideration. 
So that as God is infinite goodness, and as our 
will can be satisfied only by an infinite good, we 
may form some idea of what a wonderful de- 
gree of sublimity and dignity God has in store 
for the will that gives itself to Him, and how 
far short of that decrree ever\*thino; must fall 
that is not infinite, eternal, and unchangeable. 
The perfection of our will takes its form, re- 
ceives its character, from the div-ine goodness 
and omnipotence, and no violence is done to 
the faculty itself by the help it receives from 
grace to attain that perfection : so that it is clear 
that God alone is a worthy object for our w^ill 
to exercise itself upon ; and since He is infinite, 
He alone should be the end and aim of every 
act of the will, of every desire we form. But 
we cannot secure this proper use of the will 
unless w'^ o:ive it entirelv and without reserve 
to God ; because, if we keep any portion of it 
for ourselves, if we have any pet wish, any fa- 
vorite desires that flatter our nature or suit our 



Our Ow7i WilL 49 

mere natural inclinations, we give a favorable 
opportunity to the enemies of our souls to de- 
fraud the Almighty of His rights ; whereas, if our 
will belongs wholly to God, as far as we can 
possibly give it to Him by an earnest wish to em- 
ploy it only according to His good pleasure, then 
we have every reason to hope that His infinite 
wisdom and goodness will direct all our desires 
and actions to the most perfect and noble end 
they can have. In fact, the whole matter re- 
duces itself to this one principle : our perfec- 
tion must be the work of God's grace ; we can 
oppose that grace only by our will ; let us then 
give our will to God once for all, and by care 
and watchfulness and obedience prevent our- 
selves from taking it back from Him either par- 
tially or wholly, and the great work of our per- 
fection cannot fail to be accomplished. But we 
must be careful not to allow an indiscreet curi- 
osity to interfere with God's work in us. His 
ways are not ours. He often uses means that 
are incomprehensible to us, and often leaves us 
in such a position that we hardly know any- 
thing for certain except the truths of faith. 
Hence we must expect that many spiritual 
phenomena will occur in us that we shall not 
be able to explain or understand ; many doubts 
and anxieties may assail us which we can as- 
sign to no cause in particular, so that we shall 



50 Otir Own Will, 

be a sort of mystery to ourselves ; in sucli 
cases we must *' possess our souls in patience," 
and obey our Superiors and listen to their ad- 
vice or reproofs with more humility and sub- 
mission than ever. We shall thus confirm the 
gift we have made of our will to God, and 
prove to Him that we were sincere in making it, 
and that we do not refuse to face any trial or 
to bear any cross that He may send us. Would 
to God that we knew thoroughly and practised 
sincerely what is meant by abandonment to the 
will of God ! With what giant steps should 
we not then advance on the path of perfection ! 



* 



Our Own Will. 51 



CHAPTER VI. 

CONSEQUENCES OF REFUSING TO ACKNOWL- 
EDGE THE CLAIMS GOD HAS ON OUR WILL. 

We have seen in the preceding chapter that 
God has many claims on our will, and that He 
does not neglect His rights, or allow them to 
be disregarded by us: on the contrary, where 
our will is concerned, He shows himself to be 
really a '* jealous God." Now we have to see 
what happens if we pay little or no attention 
to these claims of the Almighty. 

If a Religious leads a tepid, worldly life, or 
if she is habitually disobedient in some things, 
or if she deliberately retains an attachment to 
certain faults, or certain peculiarities of manner 
or disposition that she is told to correct, then 
she denies the Almighty God His just claims, 
and usurps her will for her own private pur- 
poses, although not always, still often enough 
to interfere seriously with the grace of Vocation, 
and to render her perfection a matter of impos- 
sibility. She has then a good opportunity of 
studying in her own acts and in her own con- 



52 Oti}' Own Will. 

science what her own will is doing for her ; she 
can see what it is to turn away from God to 
creatures, even in little things, and she can 
learn how unwise, how foolhardy she is to 
offend the Divine Justice, even in small things. 
If she examines herself in the spirit of repent- 
ance, and with a real desire of amendment, she 
will have reason also to correct her false judg- 
ments with regard to the magnitude and num- 
ber of her faults, and she will be forced to ac- 
knowledge that what she looked upon as a 
small fault is in reality a very serious matter, 
and what she thought might be the occasion of 
a few venial sins here and there, is in fact a 
spiritual plague-spot, that has taken possession 
of her soul, and is vitiating and defiling her 
whole spiritual existence; thus gradually un- 
dermining the life of the soul, and preparing 
the way for mortal sin and the total loss of 
grace. And if the Religious is not exactly 
tepid, in the full sense of the w^ord, if she is 
only, as she might say herself, a little careless in 
some things, which do not, she thinks, matter 
much, because she knows she has a great desire 
of perfection, although she must acknowledge 
that this desire is not sufficient to overcome her 
slothful or careless disposition — such a Reli- 
gious would find by a sincere and truthful self- 
examination, conducted according to tlie spirit 



I 



02i7^ Own Will, 53 

of the reproofs that she must often have re- 
ceived from her Superiors, that her idea of the 
dignity of her holy Vocation falls far short of 
the reality, that she is very often guilty of gross 
ingratitude to God, and that she is incurring a 
debt with the Divine Justice which it will cost 
her a great deal of suffering to pay. 

Because when we deliberately refuse to give 
our will to God we create a monster of our own, 
and, for the moment at least, offer it our homage 
and devote our faculties to its service. For 
we must act for some purpose or other; we are 
rational creatures, who can know what we are 
doing and why we are doing it : and so we must 
have an object, an end in view, in all our delib- 
erate — that is, human — acts. The one great 
end that we are commanded to have in view is 
God, the one great object for which we must 
strive is happiness, and the only true and real 
happiness is that given by God, namely, eternal 
beatitude. God Himself assures us that we 
cannot find anything but that to make us per- 
fectly, that is, eternally, happy. Now we can 
gain that happiness only by God's grace, and 
grace is no use to us if we refuse to work with it, 
that is to say, if we refuse our will to God. Fur- 
ther, there is a constant fight going on within 
"us between nature and grace. Our natural in- 
clinations, likes and dislikes, our private ideas 



54 Ctir Own Will. 

and opinions that we form on these inclina- 
tions, all strive to confine us within the nar- 
row circle of a mere natural existence, to de- 
prive our actions of all supernatural value, and 
to entice us to fix our last end in creatures || 
alone. So that when w^e obey those inclina- 
tions, even in small things, it is manifest that 
we create a monster, that we give undue pro- 
portions and a fictitious value to creatures, and 
that we show by our acts that we doubt the 
Word of God, who assures us that we are not 
created for earthly things, and that we can find 
happiness in Him alone, for whom every act of 
our lives should be performed. 

It is useless, then, to try to excuse our small 
faults, because they are small, or to say that it 
is no great matter to refuse the will to God in 
small things. All faults, no matter how trivial, 
are in themselves monstrous, and give us quite 
sufficient reason for heartfelt repentance. It is 
true that venial sins are easily forgiven, and 
that they do not deprive us altogether of grace 
or condemn us to hell; but that is due to the 
infinite mercy of God, and to His wonderful 
patience in bearing with us, and not to any- 
thing that is good or harmless in venial sin 
itself. 

The tepid or careless Religious may now see 
what she does when she refuses her will to 



Omi' Own WilL 55 

God and keeps it for herself, her own inch'na- 
tions, and her own ideas. Let her consider her 
act, too, in relation to the perfection to which 
she has bound herself, by a solemn promise 
ratified by the Church, and she will learn that 
that perfection, even as it is possible for her to 
practise it here in this life, does not admit of a 
deliberate and habitual transfer of her allegiance 
from God to creatures, even in small things, 
and that even an occasional fault or a slight re- 
bellion of the will means unfaithfulness, though 
momentary, to the obligations of her holy state. 
If she could be satisfied with being merely a 
good woman, without any higher aspirations 
than what ordinary good people in the world 
have, there might be some excuse for small 
faults, on account of the many worldly cares 
that would arise,- to distract the mind and se- 
duce the will away from God ; but in a Reli- 
gious, a Spouse of Jesus Christ, there cannot be 
any such excuse, because- her whole life in the 
convent, being arranged according to Rule, or 
to the commands of Superiors, is brought into 
immediate relation with God, and if she de- 
prives Him of His lawful influence over any of 
her actions, by no matter how slight a rebellion 
of the will, it is evident that her ingratitude to 
God is much greater than that of ordinary peo- 
ple in the world who commit the same fault. 



56 Oitr Own Will. 

Therefore, the Religious who is really anxious 
to give her will to God, so that she may con- 
stantly love and desire Him above all things, 
must not on any account try to excuse her 
faults, or to gloss over her imperfections or 
defects, either in character or action. For 
although we may have many defects that we 
are ignorant of, and for w^hich we are, conse- 
quently, not accountable, once we know of the 
existence of a defect, our responsibility with 
regard to it commences, and the very worst 
way to meet that responsibility is to try to 
ignore or forget our faults by excusing them. 
Nor must we avoid merely that gross excess 
of self-will which fills our mouths with excuses 
whenever a reproof or warning is given to us 
by a Superior or a Sister: we must descend 
into our own hearts, and explore the hidden 
and secret nooks and corners of our own opin- 
ions and natural desires, and see what it is that 
makes us refuse to give our will to God — what 
it is that makes us multiply our faults, and 
when we have found it, we must expose it to 
our Superiors or our Confessor, and be guided 
entirely by their advice. Even in making this 
examination we should take as our starting- 
point, not our own fancies regarding our faults, 
but Vv'hat our Superiors tell us, because, as we 
have to fight against a very treacherous foe, 



J 



Oitr Own WilL 57 

our own will, which is subdued by obedi- 
ence alone, we must begin subduing it by 
placing ourselves entirely at the disposal of 
those who represent the claims that God has 
on us, and we must perpetuate and ensure our 
victory over it by the same means. It is true 
that all this requires violence to ourselves, that 
it is hard to accomplish, and that it is desolat- 
ing to our nature to look forward to; but ''the 
kingdom of heaven suffereth violence" — the 
violence especially that is required to make a 
Religious forget herself in order to seek only 
God and her Sisters for God's sake. And what 
glorious results may we not expect from our 
honest endeavors to correspond with grace in 
conquering our own will! For God will not 
be outdone in generosity: when He sees that 
we acknowledge His claims, and do our best 
to satisfy them, He bestows His graces so 
largely on us that we are enabled to do the 
necessary violence to ourselves, in such a spirit 
of utter submission to the Divine Will, that 
every little sacrifice we make is increased in 
value tenfold. 

Finally, if we refuse to give our will to God, 
we may bid adieu to anything like happiness 
or contentment in the Religious Life; because 
the only happiness attainable in the convent 
cannot exist with our own will. Since we are 



58 Our Own WilL 

unable to go through this life without having, at 
least occasionally, some enjoyment, some pleas- 
ure, some feeling of satisfaction, of whatever kind 
it may be, God's infinite wisdom has so arranged 
matters that each state of life has its own pecu- 
liar sources of contentment, which act like a spur 
and an encouragement to us to induce us to 
perform the duties of the state wherein wx are 
placed. Now if by our free-will, helped by 
Divine grace, we embrace a state which obliges 
us to despise creatures for the sake of the 
Creator, and to give up the world that we may 
gain heaven, we resign at the same time all 
right to any mere natural contentment or 
feeling of satisfaction that we could get from 
using creatures according to our own fancy; 
but we do not free ourselves from the decree 
of Providence, which renders it necessary for 
us to have some consolation in this life. The 
Goodness of God, then, supplies the earthly 
comforts or consolations that we have re- 
nounced for His sake, by a superabundance of 
heavenly peace and contentment, which far 
surpasses anything that mere creatures could 
give us. So that all our lawful enjoyments or 
pleasures in the convent become supernatural- 
ized, and are thus raised to the dignity of our 
holy state, and if they lost that supernatural 
character by any excess on our part, they 



II 



Our Own WilL 59 

would cease to be enjoyments, and would 
become the occasion of remorse. The secret, 
then, of the happiness of the Religious Life, 
that is such a puzzle to worldlings, is the deep- 
seated peace of the soul, which results from 
the complete sacrifice which the good Religious 
makes of her will to God. This peace is a puz- 
zle even to our arch-enemy, the devil : he cannot 
understand, he cannot touch it with any of his 
temptations or snares; it is simply beyond him 
altogether, and it will remain so as long as our 
will remains united to God. Hence the Holy 
Scripture says, ** The obedient man," — obe- 
dience being the perfect expression of the 
union of our will with God in this life,— *^ the 
obedient man shall speak of victories." He 
may be assailed by temptations without num- 
ber, his passions may continually assault him, 
his imagination may be tormented by doubts 
and anxieties, but it matters nothing to him ; 
he overcomes all, and preserves his soul in 
peace, in spite of the disturbing elements that 
are raging around him, as long as he gives his 
will to God. But if he refuses to do so, and 
usurps his will for his own private ends, then the 
whole thing is changed, the peace of soul dis- 
appears, and can be regained only by heartfelt 
repentance. It is simply impossible, then, for 
a Religious to find happiness or contentment 



6o Our Own Will. 

in having her own way, in carrying out her own 
will ; because, by refusing her will to God, she 
renounces her right to the contentment and 
consolation that He offered her in exchange 
for her will ; nor can she regain what she has 
lost until she repents sincerely and makes 
proper atonement for her fault, according to 
her Rule and Constitutions, or the orders of 
her Superiors. 

Besides the deplorable consequences that 
follow^ directly from refusing the will to God, 
there is another no less disastrous, that w^e 
must not lose sight of, and that is the fearful 
multiplication of venial sins through habit or 
nesflis^ence. When we accustom ourselves to 
do our own will in certain things, — for instance, 
by disobeying some of the Constitutions, or 
by neglecting to carry out the commands of 
our Superiors, — although these things do not 
of themselves bind under pain of sin, yet since 
we know that deliberate disobedience has 
nearly always some kind of venial guilt at- 
tached to it, w^e of course place ourselves in 
the constant danger of sin ; and what can we 
expect but to fall? But even if no sin were 
committed by the repeated acts of disobe- 
dience, these acts must lead to sin. For why 
do we refuse to obey.^ Is it not because we 
prefer doing our own will to the will of God? 



J 



Our Own IVilL 6i 

Now our own will is the offspring of our 
natural likes and dislikes, of our passions, and 
of our evil inclinations ; that is to say, of the 
very things that the devil makes use of to 
lead us to sin. What else, then, can we ex- 
pect but sin from folio\ying our own will? 
What a fruitful source of venial sin have we 
not here! Further, sin and ignorance go to- 
gether; the one follows the other as surely as 
darkness is caused by the withdrawal of light : 
so that, where we habitually follow our own 
w^ill, the devil has little trouble in drawing the 
veil of culpable ignorance and spiritual blind- 
ness over our understanding, and in thus en- 
abling us to commit countless venial sins with- 
out any thought of repenting of them, no mat- 
ter how our Superiors m.ay remonstrate with 
us. Is it any wonder, then, that we do not 
advance in perfection, and that the years and 
years that we perhaps have spent in the con- 
vent have not made us a bit more fervent or 
more earnest in the Divine Service? What 
can we expect but sin and misery and igno- 
rance when we reject the will of God, even in 
small things, and make a law of our own will 
to be the guide and motive of our actions? 
We should therefore pray fervently and con- 
stantly that God may deign to take our wills 
into His holy keeping, to make His will the 



62 Our Own WilL 

only motive of all our actions, and, as the 
Church prays in one of the Collects of the 
MasSy '* Nostras etiam rebellos ad te compelle 
voiuntates," if He sees that we are inclined to 
rebel against Him in anything, that He may, in 
His mercy, pour such a large infusion of His 
grace into our souls that we may have no wish 
or desire except to do and suffer what is pleas- 
ing to Him. This is the only desire that a 
Spouse of Christ should have, for it is the only 
one that fits in completely with her holy Voca- 
tion, and consequently the only one of whose 
fulfilment she can have perfect confidence, to 
her great contentment and satisfaction. 



Our Own Will. 6 



o 



CHAPTER VII. 

WHAT RESULTS FROM FOLLOWING OUR OWN 
WILL. 

The human will is such a noble and power- 
ful faculty, that its influence is sought for by 
every intelligent being who knows its worth. 
Even God Himself, who gave us our will, is 
most pleased with us when He sees that we try 
to give it back to Him, as it were, by employ- 
ing it wholly in His service. The angels and 
saints, too, rejoice at seeing the will of man, 
on earth, helping them in their glorious task of 
promoting the honor and glory of God. But 
besides God and His angels and saints, there 
are other intelligent beings in the universe to 
whom the human will is also an object of in- 
terest, and who are exceedingly anxious to se- 
cure it for their own purposes. These beings 
are the devil and his angels, who, with their 
ministers on earth, the world and the flesh, 
prepare many a snare, lay many a trap to 
catch the unwary Religious, and to entangle 
her will in the meshes of vain and fruitless dc- 



64 Our Own Will, 

sires that render her perfection impossible and 
even her salvation doubtful. For where the 
will refuses to recognize its lawful Lord, it 
will soon find a tyrant to enslave it and reduce 
it to the worst and most degrading bondage. 
Therefore St. Peter says, " Be sober and 
watch: because your adversary the devil, as 
a roaring lion, goeth about seeking whom he 
may devour; whom resist ye, strong in faith." 
It is from the grace of faith that we get true 
knowledge to oppose to the cunning and de- 
ceit of Satan, and it is through the same grace 
that the efforts we make, with the divine as- 
sistance, to avoid his snares are successful. 
But neither faith nor any other grace will save 
or sanctify us against our will, and so it be- 
hooves us to be watchful. We are carrying a 
precious treasure, our free-will, in a fragile vase ; 
the demons envy us the possession of that 
treasure as long as we use it in the service of 
God, and therefore they spare no effort to in- 
duce us to squander it foolishly and criminally 
on worthless and unlawful things, so that God, 
whom they hate, may be deprived at least of 
the glory He would receive from the proper 
use of our free-will. 

If we neglect the advice of St. Peter, and 
allow our will to become, even in small things, 
alienated from God, we deprive it of its most 



OtLT Own Will. 65 

powerful protector and best friend, and leave 
it unaided and alone to fall a prey to the 
snares of its worst enemy. For if the devil 
finds our will unoccupied by God, he can make 
an easy entrance into it, and do us a great deal 
of harm. It might be well for us to know, as 
far as possible, how that harm is effected. 

We have every reason to believe that, with- 
out a special revelation, the devil cannot have 
any true knowledge of many acts that we per- 
form : he may form an opinion of what he sees 
outwardly, and his long experience and great 
natural powers no doubt assist his perverse 
will in trying to destroy and corrupt the good 
acts we perform. And, with regard to a soul 
in the state of mortal sin, it would be diflficult 
for us to place any bounds to the knowledge 
which the demon has of the workings, the 
motives, and the guiding, or rather misleading, 
influences of that soul, as long as it repels and 
rejects every movement of grace and repent- 
ance. Because the soul in mortal sin belongs 
to the devil, in so far that, like him, it rejects 
God as its last end. But when the soul is in 
the state of grace there must be many things 
in it that are a puzzle to him, and which, 
with all his craft and cunning, he cannot find 
out. For such a soul elicits many supernatural 
acts of the will by good desires and resolutions. 



66 Our Own Will, 

and especially by acts of the love of God ; its 
understanding is very often employed with the 
mysteries of faith in a manner and with a degree 
of intensity that could come only from the 
help of divine grace ; and the understanding 
and will act and react on one another, produc- 
ing thereby many spiritual acts that redound 
to the greater glory of God, and help us to the 
end for which we are created. Now, such 
spiritual phenomena as these are mainly the 
work of the Almighty God, and they are in- 
tended by Him (in which intention the soul, as 
w^e suppose, cooperates) to lead us to a super- 
natural end, so that such acts are essentially 
supernatural: they do not belong to the mere 
natural order as w^e understand it, nor do they 
belong to the order natural to the demons, 
although their nature is in itself higher and 
more powerful than ours. Their knowledge 
therefore cannot reach to the full intelligence 
of such acts, no more than their power can 
reach to the conquering of our will, as long as 
we choose to resist that power. We see an 
example of this in holy Job. The tempter was 
jealous of the favor which this holy Patriarch 
enjoyed with the Almighty God ; he was espe- 
cially enraged at the watchfulness displayed by 
him in offering sacrifices so regularly, to atone 
for any sins that might have been committed 



• 



Our Own WilL 67 

by his children in their banquets; for this 
watchfulness, recommended afterwards by St. 
Peter, effectually foiled all the tempter's evil 
suggestions, and forced him. to confess himself 
conquered by the rectitude of will which the 
holy patriarch displayed. Still he was evidently 
ignorant of the great degree of resignation to 
the Divine Will which was Job's chief motive. 
His natural cunning could not follow up the 
sublime workings of grace in a will that was 
thoroughly submissive to God, and so he 
stopped short at a point that his malice would 
naturally suggest to him, namely, that the 
foundation of Job's piety was simply the tempo- 
ral prosperity with which God had blessed him. 
Hence came the persecutions and severe trials 
that God permitted for the greater good of his 
faithful servant. This example should convince 
us that we have little reason to dread the 
severest assaults of temptation, as long as our 
will remains firmly united to God; for the 
devil cannot do more against us than his 
knowledge of our circumstances enables him to 
do, and this knowledge, as v/e have seen, is in 
many instances very circumscribed. No temp- 
tation, then, should ever cause us to lose cour- 
age, or to doubt that God is turning all our 
trials into good. 

There is, however, one part of our nature of 



68 Our Own Will. 

which we may say that the devil knows even 
more than v/e do ourselves, and into which he 
can nearly always enter when it pleases him : 
that part is the seat of our natural inclinations, 
of our likes and dislikes, of those purely natural 
affections, sympathies, and aversions which even 
clever and unscrupulous men make use of, for 
their own selfish ends, in their fellow-men. 
How often have we not heard of people being 
made fools of by those who knew how to play 
upon their natural inclinations! Much more 
eagerly and with far greater perversity than 
any micre mortal do the evil spirits play upon 
our inclinations, excite them if they are bad, 
turn them away from God if they are naturally 
good, and use them in every possible \vay in 
order to get a hold upon our will. And the 
tempter shows a great deal of craft in going to 
work where there is question of misleading a 
soul that is determined to serve God, and 
rather to die than commit a mortal sin. He 
does not propose at first anything grievously 
sinful, for such a temptation would at once 
unmask his artifices and ensure his defeat : on 
the contrary, he tries to enlist the cooperation 
of our natural inclinations in anything, no 
matter what, as long as it is something of his 
own choice, and when he secures that, his effort 
is to lead us on farther and farther, until we 



Oitr Own Will. 69 

find ourselves at last so entangled in his meshes 
that it is only with great difficulty we can break 
through them. The tempter's object is, then, 
to work up our natural likes and dislikes, until 
he gets us to form some decided opinions of 
our own on various matters. When we allow 
these opinions to take such hold of us that, for 
the sake of them, we are prepared to disobey 
our Superiors, or in any way to prefer our own 
will to .God's will, then it is clear that the 
tempter will have an easy victory over us, and 
that he will lead us into many a venial sin, if 
not even into mortal sin. Thus it is that the 
Religious who refuses her will to God abandons 
herself, with all her natural weaknesses, to the 
wiles of Satan, who is only too anxious to fur- 
nish her with opinions of her own against obe- 
dience, and to help her to assert those opinions 
in flagrant violation of the respect due to 
superior authority. No doubt, as St. Thomas 
teaches, our bodily temperament or disposition 
is often the cause of natural opinions, likes or 
dislikes, and it often puts difficulties in the 
way of obedience, often inclines us to withdraw 
our will from God, even without any tempta- 
tion of Satan being necessary to make us rebel ; 
but it is manifest that such natural inclinations, 
if we oppose them, as soon as we advert to their 
attacks, are not sinful, because the authority 



70 Ou7^ Own WilL 

of the will IS wanting to them and hence the 
Angelic Doctor lays down, as a general conclu- 
sion, that the acts of the sensitive appetite 
(the natural likes or dislikes, inclinations, etc., 
mentioned above) are subject to the dominion 
of reason, although frequently they are pro- 
duced in a sort of material way, without any 
reference to reason. (Cf. St. Thomas, i"^^ 2*^^®, 
q. xvii., a. vii.) 

It is against these natural inclinations that 
the true spouse of Christ has to fight, if she is 
really anxious to keep her will free from the 
contamination of sin. For, besides leaving her 
exposed to the attacks of the devil, these in- 
clinations, if not constantly watched and re- 
sisted, will tend to fill her with worldly and self- 
ish ideas. It is truly astonishing what a hold 
the world and its ways have on us. We have 
fled the world at the call of God, we know that 
it has nothing fit for a Religious, we learn even 
to fear and abhor it ; and still, if we analyze 
most of the faults we commit, we shall find 
some opinion or maxim prevalent in the world 
at the bottom of most of them. And here I 
do not speak of excesses or defects of personal 
character which lead to faults, but of habits 
deliberately adopted and persevered in, of 
modes of thinking opposed to the religious 
spirit, and which we refuse to give up ; of a 



i 



Our Own Will, 71 

tendency to judge and criticise, to approve of 
and find fault with, which show that a Religious 
can be worldly-minded in many things, although 
she may have spent years in the convent. But 
they also prove that a Religious addicted to 
such faults is careless, and that she does not 
watch over her natural inclinations sufficiently. 
Because the Religious Life, being the embodi- 
ment of the opposition of Christ to the world, 
offers every facility for conquering anything 
like worldliness, and where these facilities are 
neglected there is an evident want of watchful- 
ness. Therefore a Religious whose hatred of 
the world is sincere will not shirk the trouble 
necessary to oppose and overcome all habits and 
prejudices that render obedience difficult. She 
will also carefully avoid everything that might 
tend to foster a worldly spirit. If her duties 
bring her into contact with lay-people, she must 
beware of making them her confidants, or of 
speaking with them on any subject that does 
not concern the glory of God, the advantage 
of the Order, or the requirements of Christian 
charity. Still less should she desire the esteem 
or the sympathy of people in the world. A 
desire of that kind, deliberately admitted, 
would prove to a certainty that she has not 
the true spirit of the Religious Life, and would 
be a fruitful source of scandal to good Chris- 



72 Our Own IVilL 

tians, who have every right to expect a thor- 
ough detachment from earthly things, in all 
those Vv'ho receive the grace of Vocation to the 
Religious Life. 

Finally, the Religious who follows her own 
\V\\\ n.rty be certain that self-love and self-es- 
teem will gain great power over her, and will 
place a most formidable obstacle in the way of 
her perfection. This unfortunate self-love is a 
consequence of sin, and it bears all the charac- 
teristic marks of its origin. For it is a love of 
self, on account of self ; an act, therefore, which 
excludes God and ignores Him, and by which 
we often substitute ourselves in place of God. 
Consequently, it leads us on to claim for our- 
selves and our own opinions, what really be- 
longs not to us by any title, and thus we inflict 
a wrong, an injustice, on the Almighty in the 
persons of cur Superiors, His representatives. 
It is a false love, v\diich concentrates our sym- 
pathies, our desires, and our affections on the 
vain and disappointing things of earth ; it is a 
degrading love, which confines our intentions 
and aspirations within the narrow circle of a 
merely natural life, or directs us to seek for 
supernatural things by absurd and impossible 
means. As a necessary consequence of self- 
love, we must also expect that self-esteem will 
assert its sv/ay over us to such an extent as to 



Our Own Will. 73 

make us look upon ourselves as superior to 
others. Nothing, then, will have any worth in 
our eyes unless it is conformable to our pecul- 
iar opinions and feelings ; vv^e shall give our es- 
teem to no one who does not think as we do, 
even in worthless and trivial matters. So that 
our standard of judgment will not be God*s 
eternal truth, but the whims and fancies of our 
imagination, or the prejudices which for the 
moment happen to have most influence with 
us. Thus, our faith is put in the background, 
our hope depends on the humor in which we 
find ourselves, and our charity or love of God 
is grudgingly proved, and is maintained only 
with difficulty. Nor is there any hope of our 
enjoying peace of soul under such circum- 
stances, for where we love ourselves foolishly, 
we cannot bear correction or reproof; nor can 
we find any happiness as long as we refuse, 
through self-love and self-esteem, to submit to 
our Superiors. 

The Religious v/ho desires to avoid all these 
dangers, and to rise superior to any attack of the 
devil, the world, and her own self-love, will seek 
in all her actions to mortify her own will ; for 
it is only by means of our own will that the 
enemies of our souls can do anything against 
us. As long as we keep the will firmly united 
to God, every attack of the Evil One, every al- 



74 Our Ozvn Will. 

lurement of the world, and every movement of 
self-love will only give us an additional oppor- 
tunity of showing forth the power and good- 
ness of God, by the victory that His grace will 
enable us to gain. And since we cannot reach 
perfection all at once, since the weakness of 
nature cannot be overcome unless by patience 
and perseverance, if w^e commit any faults or 
forget our good resolutions we must immedi- 
ately repent, and resolve to serve God with 
more fervor than ever. And as the author of 
the Spiritual Combat says, vre must renew our 
repentance and resolution a hundred times a 
day if necessary ; for God, who sees the heart, 
and knows the frailty of human nature, will ac- 
cept our sorrow^ and prevent our faults from 
doing us harm. 

As peace of soul is the reward, here below, 
of giving our will to God, and also a great 
source of strength to us in the mortification of 
our own will, we cannot do better than take 
deeply to heart the follov/ing words of the 
Iinitatio7i of Christ : " In everything attend to 
thyself, what thou art doing, and what thou 
art saying; and direct thy whole intention to 
this, that thou mayest please i^Ie alone, and 
neither desire nor seek anything out of ]\Ie. 
And as for the sayings and doings of others, 
judge of nothing rashly; neither busy thyself 



Otir Own Will. 75 

with things not committed to thy care ; and 
thus may it be brought about that thou shalt 
be Httle or seldom disturbed. But never to 
feel any trouble at all, nor to suffer any grief 
of heart or body, is not the state of this pres- 
ent life, but of everlasting rest/' {Imitation^ b. 
iii., chap, xxv.) 



76 Otir Own Will. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

CHARACTERISTICS OF OUR OWN WILL. 

As the will, directed to its perfection and 
united with God, takes, as it were, the form of 
all its acts from God, so that those acts are 
looked upon by Him as supernatural and de- 
serving of eternal life ; so when we turn away 
the will from its perfection, and leave it to be 
swayed by creatures, its acts and desires take 
their form from the leading influence; but, as 
we have seen already, natural desires are in- 
constant and vary with their objects, so that, 
when we take away our will from God, and 
use it only to suit our own taste, we must ex- 
pect to find it assuming different characters, 
according to the different worthless or evil de- 
sires to which we direct it. Our highest idea 
of perfection is unity; we see at a glance that 
there can be only one God, for it is impossible 
that there can be two infinitely perfect beings. 
Further, any relative perfection that may exist - 
in creatures must, somehow or other, reflect 
this all-perfect unity of God, for it is in Him- 



Our Own WilL "jj 

self that the Creator finds every goodness that 
He gives to His creatures. Speaking, there- 
fore, of human acts, it is clear that the highest 
and best act of which man is capable, under 
any circumstances, must have this character of 
unity stamped upon it. Take, for instance, 
any act of Our Divine Lord, during His life 
on earth, and we shall at once refer it to the 
great design, which was the final object of the 
Mystery of the Incarnation, namely, the ac* 
complishment of the Will of His Father in 
Heaven. During all the various stages and 
incidents of Our Lord's earthly career this 
great purpose stamped itself on everything 
He did. It unified His life, so to speak, and 
presented it to His Eternal Father as the most 
perfect of human lives. Now He has left us 
the same object to strive for, and the same 
means, the human will assisted by divine grace, 
to gain it, and He tells us, over and over again, 
that we must do as He did, and each in our 
own degree, and according to the measure of 
tlie helps given us by God, use our utmost en- 
deavors to accomplish the will of God in all 
things, that we may approach as nearly as pos- 
sible to that supreme perfection of which He 
is our model. Truly there is a vast difference 
between the fulness of the Holy Spirit, which 
Our Lord's soul enjoyed, and the graces that 



yS OiLi^ Own Will. 

God in His great mercy deigns to bestow on 
us unworthy sinners ; just as there is between 
the capacity of our will to correspond with 
grace, and the uninterrupted union which ex- 
isted between the human and the Divine Will 
in Our Blessed Lord : yet it is still true that 
He worked with His human will and divine 
grace to fulfil the one object of His life. Fol- 
lowing His example, then, we can attain, in 
our own degree, this perfection of unity by 
giving our will altogether to God and to His 
love and service. But when we follow our 
own opinions and refuse our will to God, it is 
evident that we recede from this perfection 
and bring about confusion and disorder in our 
actions, so that our lives are characterized by 
inconstancy, discord, and inconsistency. For, 
where we refuse to follow any guidance but 
the momentary whim or fancy that possesses 
us, we cut ourselves loose from the only prin- 
ciple that could impart stability or uniformity 
to our actions. 

Since there is such an endless variety in per- 
sonal qualities and character, some loving nat- 
urally what others detest, some approving of 
and praising as good what others condemn and 
avoid as evil, it would be manifestly an impos- 
sible task to follow up our own will in all its 
vagaries, and to describe it under all its differ- 



Our Own VVilL 7g 

ent shapes ; for the objects on which it can ex- 
ercise its desires and dislikes are innumerable. 
Yet, as far as the individual responsibility of 
each one of us is concerned, we can and must 
trace the working of our own will in every 
wrong act we do^ for God gives us special 
graces to that effect, particularly in the warn- 
ings and reproofs of our Superiors. In fact, if 
we distrust ourselves as we ought, we might 
easily be afraid of finding our own will mixed 
up even with our best actions. For there is 
no doubt that it is the one great enemy of our 
perfection, and that the devil can do nothing 
to injure us without it. Even if it should 
happen that we have a difficulty in tracing 
some fault to its cause, or in finding out where 
our own will principally asserts itself in any 
act, we have always our Superiors or our Con- 
fessor to refer to, and we can rest fully satisfied 
with their judgment, knowing that God will 
protect them from error in a matter of such 
serious import to us. If we were out in the 
world, distracted and preoccupied with business 
cares, we could easily imagine that this would 
be a difficult task for us, but since God has 
called us to the Religious Life, He gives us 
also whatever means of perfection our holy 
state requires. We have to see, therefore, 
what are the principal marks by which wx may 



So Our Own Will, 

detect our own will in our actions, so that we 
may labor all the more earnestly to mortify it. 
St. Ambrose (lib. i., De vocat. Gent. c. 2, 
apud De Ponte. Medit., vol. i.) lays down the 
following as the principal : Our own will, he 
says, is bluid in desires, ptiffed-up in honors, 
anxious in cares, uneasy in suspicions, more 
eager for glory than for virtue, more desirous 
of fame than of a good conscience, and more 
miserable when it has the things it longs for 
than when it is without them, for experienee 
increases its misery. All these marks bear the 
evident impress of the lamentable consequences 
of sin : they show what a miserable creature 
man is when he presumes to be his own guide 
and director, even in small things, and they 
prove, with certainty, that we depend abso- 
lutely and entirely on the mercy and provi- 
dence of God for every good that we have. 
But is it not going too far when we attribute 
such characteristics as these to the slight faults 
that are committed by Religious? How could 
we say, for instance, when we are guilty of a 
small act of disobedience, that w^e are blind in 
our desires, or more eager for glory than for 
virtue? Such things might be affirmed of an 
ambitious worldling who has no thought be- 
yond this life, and whose desires are centred 
in the honors that the world can give him ; but 



I 



Otir Own Will. 8i 

can they be said of a Religious who has left all 
ill order to serve God and who is really anxious 
to live in conformity with her holy Vocation? 
To answer this question we must remember 
that faults or sins, no matter how small rela- 
tively, are all evil, and that the smallest de- 
liberate faults are opposed to the Divine Per- 
fections; consequently, in small offences we 
have the germs of great ones, and venial sin 
is the quickest and surest road to mortal sin ; 
so that it is well for us that God's mercy is so 
great, and that He has such patience with our 
weakness. Besides, we may afifirm of Religious 
what St. Bernard says of priests: Nugae in ore 
secMlarinm nugae sunt, in ore Sacerdotis bias- 
phemiae — Trifles are only trifles in the mouths 
of worldlings, but they become blasphemies 
when uttered by priests, or by Religious who 
have bound themselves by vow to the service 
of God. *' To whom much is given, from him 
much shall be expected ;" the spouse of Christ 
receives numerous and special graces in her 
holy Vocation ; it is only right, then, that she 
should avoid not merely mortal sin, or habitual 
venial sin, but also every fault and imperfection 
that savors in the least of the world, or of a 
love of self. For, must she not immolate her- 
self on the altar of Divine Love every day of 
her life, by denying herself and living in obe- 



82 Our Own V/ilL 

dience? Let her see, then, that the sacrifice 
she offers is an unspotted one, and let her 
learn not to gloss over or palhate her faults, 
but to look at them as they are, in all their 
deformity and hideousness, that she may con- 
ceive a proper horror of them. 

But this work of analyzing our faults and 
tracing the evil effects of our own will cannot 
be accomplished by mere natural means; the 
greatest intellects that ever were could not 
undertake it successfully without the help of 
divine grace. Therefore we must pray, and 
pray unceasingly, that God may deign to teach 
us whatever He wishes us to know about our- 
selves ; avoiding at the same time everything 
in the shape of over-eagerness or anxiety, for 
are not our fortunes in the hands of the Lord : 
/;/ mamis Domini sortcs mece ? This and 
every other act of our lives we must begin and 
end with confidence in God and mistrust in our- 
selves, as the Author of the Spiritual Combat 
tells us, and we may rest assured that every- 
thing will end favorably to the greater glory of 
God, and to our perfection. 

In the following chapters we shall consider 
the characteristics of our own will in detail. 



Otii' Own IVilL Zi 



CHAPTER IX. 

OUR OWN WILL IS BLIND IN ITS DESIRES. 

One of the most deplorable consequences of 
original sin is spiritual blindness. The foul 
and noxious vapors of ignorance and error en- 
veloped the minds of our first parents after 
their fall and robbed them of the pure light 
and the clear knowledge and appreciation of 
supernatural truths, which they enjoyed as 
long as they persevered in innocence ; not al- 
together, certainly, but to such an extent that 
the knowledge they had in their fallen state 
was as ignorance and blindness compared to 
that which they lost. This blindness w^as cured 
partially, and as far as was necessary for their 
salvation and even, as we may readily believe, 
for their perfection, by God's promise to send 
them a Redeemer and to forgive them, 
through Him, the sin they had committed, if 
they truly repented of it. But the deep wound 
inflicted by sin was never thoroughly healed, 
and so we, the descendants of Adam and Eve, 
are born in a spiritual blindness that only the 



84 Our Own WilL 

waters of Baptism can remove. That holy Sac- 
rament works so effectually, that original sin is 
completely taken away, but it does not restore 
all that we lost through the fall of our first par- 
ents, and thus it happens that as long as we 
are alive, we must fight against the conse- 
quences of sin in our own nature, and especi- 
ally against that darkness of the intellect that 
dulls and deadens our perception of spiritual 
and supernatural truths. We could not keep 
up this fight against spiritual ignorance and 
blindness even for a moment, without the as- 
sistance of divine grace ; when we correspond 
with grace to the best of our ability, we may 
be assured of victory, but when we shrink from 
the obedience and submission that God re- 
quires of us, and prefer to do our own will, we 
give ourselves up to the influence of the spirit- 
ual blindness, and must only expect to suffer 
from it. We shall now try to see how it acts 
in the disobedient or careless Religious. 

When she who has vowed to obey her 
Superiors for God's sake disregards or neglects 
her obligation, she prefers, for the moment at 
least, what this world can give her, to the 
spiritual blessings that God has promised her. 
Thus she takes her v/ill away from God, refuses 
to acknowledge the claims He has on it, and 
her desires becomes merely natural and earthly. 



Oicr Own WilL 85 

The due restraint of such desires should come 
from the reason helped by grace^ but she has 
rejected grace, and consequently her reason 
is unable to exercise any control over her 
desires. Now we have seen already that 
natural desires vary and change constantly, on 
account of the disappointment which their ful- 
filment is sure to bring with it ; the reason 
ought to learn from such experience that 
natural desires are unprofitable, but the lesson 
cannot help it as long as it refuses to submit 
to grace. Thus the will, instead of turning it- 
self altogether away from things that can only 
disappoint it, becomes filled with a sort of ani- 
mal and irrational eagerness to find some hap- 
piness or good of its own fancy, of its own 
creation, and it rushes on madly in pursuit of 
that fantastic happiness, that imaginary good, 
blindly ignoring and disregarding the distinc- 
tion between right and wrong, provided it can 
gratify its unreasonable desire. While the will 
is in this state, it acts blindly, because it sees 
neither reason nor conscience, but allows itself 
to be dragged along, unresistingly, by some 
passion or inclination that both reason and 
conscience must condemn. Besides that, our 
spiritual energies become unduly biassed by 
the tyranny which we exercise over them by 
our own will, not allowing them to work for 



86 Our Own Will. 

God, but compelling them to assist us in our 
disobedience. The imagination presents us 
with all sorts of unreal and fanciful pictures, 
the memory betrays us by distorting facts and 
attributing them to wrong motives, while the 
understanding wastes its energies in the pur- 
suit of an unreal and purely imaginary truth. 
It requires no argument to show that such a 
state of the soul is a very dangerous one; for 
it gives the tempter an advantage over us that 
he is not slow in seizing, by rendering us in- 
capable often of distinguishing between the 
assaults of passion and the impulses and warn- 
ings of right reason. Suppose the case of a 
Religious who does her own will because she 
has some dislike to her Superiors. Interpreting 
everything according to the blind desires that 
actuate her, she even tries to persuade herself 
that she is doing right in disobeying, because it 
is a good thing for a Superior to learn her own 
faults, to see that she might stretch her author- 
ity too far, and to be careful always to suit her 
command to the taste and inclination of her 
Sisters. These and similar vain and absurd 
excuses are suggested in abundance by the 
devil, who is only too anxious to make use of 
every opportunity that we offer him of destroy- 
ing or lessening the influence of faith in our 
souls. And we know from sad experience 



Our Own IVilL 87 

that when we are bent on doing our own will, 
it is Httle matter to us that the reasons w^e 
bring forward in support of our perversity 
are founded neither on truth nor justice. 
Even when compelled by the force of truth to 
confess that we do wrong by following our 
own will, the natural desire that attracts us 
sometimes gains such strength, that this confes- 
sion of the truth is more material than real ; 
we make it because we cannot help ourselves, 
wishing all the while that the truth were other- 
wise. Thus our own u^ill becomes so blinded 
by its desires that it wages war on truth it- 
self when it can no longer disguise, under the 
name of truth, the falsehood it longs for. 

God has given us reason that we may obey 
His holy law in a manner suited to our dignity 
as human beings. As long as reason holds its 
proper place, assisted by divine grace, no temp- 
tations or difficulties that miay arise can inter- 
fere with the merit of our actions, or prevent 
them from being acceptable in the sight of God, 
so that the divine law becom.es the ruling 
motive of our lives, and the various accidents 
and changes of human existence are only so 
many steps, by which we ascend to God, and 
free ourselves miore and more from the shackles 
of passion and earthly vanity. The light of 
grace then illumines our whole being, and we 



88 Oitr Own Will. 

get a clear perception of supernatural truths, 
as well as a wonderful power of appreciating 
their importance; the consequence of which is, 
that difficulties, temptations, and natural weak- 
ness only increase the firmness of our deter- 
mination to serve God, and Him alone. But 
when we degrade the reason to be the mere 
slave of our own desires, by following our own 
will, we deprive ourselves of the guidance of 
this heavenly light, the divine law loses its 
power over us, and we make a law for ourselves, 
founded, not on the claims of justice or the 
rights that God has over us, but upon the whims 
and vagaries of our own humor, and upon the 
unjust and unreasonable claims of passion and 
prejudice. Thus we make our passions the 
rule of our conduct, and open a wide door to 
the enemy of our souls, through which he will 
not fail to enter, so as to trade on our blindness 
and perversity as far as possible. When this 
blindness is only transritory, as in the case of a 
single act of disobedience of which we soon 
repent, it is in itself bad enough, and could do 
us a great deal of harm if God were not so 
merciful and so patient in our regard ; but 
when it is the result of habit, the expression 
and the effect of an attachment to some opin- 
ion or prejudice, which w^e make little or no 
efforts to overcome, then there is no doubt that 



Our Ozvn WilL 89 

the enemy will gain many a victory over us, 
and will so pervert our judgment that in many 
instances our own opinions will take the place 
that ought to be occupied by the truths of 
faith and their consequences. 

The effect of this blindness of the will in its 
desires may be seen in the Religious who is dis- 
satisfied with her Superiors, because, as she 
thinks, they do not treat her as they treat her 
Sisters. This case may explain, better than any 
other, how far the devil can pervert our judg- 
ment, when we place ourselves in his power by 
doing our own wilL Every Religious must know 
that she enters the convent to do the will of 
God, that she is not to seek for any satisfaction 
or pleasure except what He gives to her, and 
that she is to look for no approval, praise, or 
favor except from Him alone. Her Superiors 
are God's representatives in her regard, their 
duty is to see that she satisfies the claims that 
He has on her love and service, and to this 
end they must strive to bring all her actions 
under the protection of the great virtue of 
obedience. They have, therefore, to prescribe 
for her what they conscientiously think to be 
best suited to advance her perfection, and 
their main object in all their commands and 
reproofs must be the will of God. Now it is 
evidently impossible for any Religious to have 



90 Our Ozun IVi/L 

either the right or the abiHty to judge her 
Superiors or prescribe to them what they 
should do, either with regard to herself or to 
her Sisters ; neither can she know what sort of 
treatment is best for herself, or what kind of 
manner or action on the part of her Superiors 
is best suited to advance her spiritual interests, 
otherwise she might have remained in the 
world and managed her own affairs altogether; 
so that when she does presume to judge those 
whom God has placed over her, it is an evident 
proof that she is suffering from spiritual blind- 
ness, that she views things in the wrong light 
altogether, and that the devil has so befooled 
her, by means of her own will, that she has for- 
gotten the real reason why she entered the 
convent, and fancies that she has a right to do 
as she pleases. 

Another instance of the evil effects of this 
blindness may be seen in the Religious who 
has become so attached to her own will in some 
particular thing, that her Superiors are obliged 
to be very careful in what they say to her, lest 
they should make her more obstinate or more 
indisposed to submit to their authority. The 
difificulty that she has in submitting to any- 
thing opposed to her favorite idea makes it 
often necessary for them to pass over in silence 



Our Own Will. 91 

faults that, in an ordinary case, would merit 
reproof; this unfortunate necessity, too, tends 
to strengthen her in her opinion, and when at 
last something occurs that cannot be tolerated, 
and her Superiors are obliged to correct her, 
she gives way to indignation and resents the 
correction as an injury, thus, by a deliberate 
rebellion of the will, rendering it useless. 

Of course we cannot expect to have such a 
clear and intuitive perception of supernatural 
truths as to be able to bear every reproof with- 
out feeling any discontent or displeasure at it. 
St. Francis de Sales, writing to the Nuns of 
the Visitation, tells them that if they arrived 
at that degree of perfection a quarter of an 
hour before death, it would be a great matter 
indeed ; because even good and earnest Re- 
ligious must be prepared to find their self-will 
often trying to assert itself. But our duty is 
to combat and not give way to these attacks ; 
so that v/henever we yield to them, we may 
take it for granted that we are suffering more 
or less from spiritual blindness. And if v/e 
allow this blindness to influence us to such an 
extent as to cause us deliberately to adopt 
habits or ways of thinking opposed to the 
Religious spirit, then we may be assured that 
we are very far from the perfection of our holy 



92 Our Own WilL 

state, and that we have reason to dread all the 
dangers that accompany tepidity in the service 
of God. 

Finally, the blindness of the will in its own 
desires gradually saps and undermines the very 
foundation of spiritual progress — confidence in 
God, How can we have confidence in God 
when we refuse to see how His Providence 
rules and directs everything for our benefit? 
Not even the first step to confidence, resig- 
nation, is possible for us under such circum- 
stances, because v/e deliberately place our own 
desires above the decrees of Providence, and 
foolishly try to bend the Almighty's Will to 
our own caprices, instead of submitting to it 
with all our powers of soul and body. But we 
cannot do anything for our eternal w^elfare un- 
less with the help of God's grace, and to get 
that help we must confess, with all humility, 
that v/e stand in need of it ; we must ask for it 
with full trust in God, and we must be willing 
and prepared to receive it in the manner, meas- 
ure, and time in which He is disposed to give 
it to us. If we refuse to see His work in the 
various incidents and circumstances of our 
lives, if we are impatient at the way in which 
He deals with us, if we, implicitly at least, 
presume to dictate to Him as to the fulfilment 
of the decrees of His Providence, it is evident 



1 



Our Own Will. 93 

that we forfeit our title to His grace, and that 
we compel Him, so to speak, to leave us to 
the miseries that spiritual blindness is sure to 
entail on us. 

To cure this great evil caused by the blind- 
ness of pride, we must * apply the certain 
remedy of the blindness that comes from 
humility— that is, obedience ; unquestioning, 
full, unhesitating obedience. And we must 
begin by beHeving what our Superiors and 
Spiritual Advisers tell us of the state of our 
soul, no matter what our opinion may be to 
the contrary. If we find that we are inclined 
to disbelieve them, and that we attempt to 
reason with ourselves to prove them to be in 
the wrong, we may take that as a sure indica- 
tion that we are far gone in spiritual blindness^ 
and that it is high time for us to commence to 
cure that dangerous disease of the soul, by 
practising an obedience, as perfect as we can 
render, to the commands and warnings of 
those whom God has placed over us, and to 
whom He gives abundant graces for our guid- 
ance and direction. The cure may be gradual, 
and it may come all of a sudden, according as 
God has decreed, but in either case, once we 
undertake to use the proper remedy with a 
sincere desire to get rid of the obstacle that 
hinders our perfection, and continue to use 



r 



94 



Oitr Own WilL 



it with courage and perseverance, and with 
heartfelt, though hopeful repentance for any 
incidental faults we may be guilty of, we need 
not doubt that God will look upon us with an 
eye of mercy, and will free us, in His own good 
time, from spiritual blindness* 



Our Own Will. 95 



CHAPTER X. 

OUR OWN WILL IS PUFFED UP IN HONORS. 

The spirit of the Religious Life prompts us 
to avoid seeking after honors, or soliciting 
from others any word or sign that we might 
construe into approbation or praise of our own 
excellence. And this with very good reason, 
because all honor belongs properly to God, 
and must be referred finally to Him; any act, 
therefore, on the part of others, that might 
tempt us to arrogate to ourselves or to termi- 
nate in ourselves the honor due to God, is 
exceedingly dangerous, inasmuch as it might 
lead us to comm.it a great injustice. For, in 
reality, any excellence that is in us, whether 
of nature or grace, is a pure gift of the divine 
liberality; by our own unassisted efforts we can- 
not make ourselves either learned or talented, 
or devout or mortified; ^' all our sufificiency 
is from God ;" whatever good we have must, 
then, be referred to the end of our creation 
— the greater honor and glory of God. We 
know how fully the saints were penetrated 



96 Our Own IVilL 

with this truth : many of them were placed in 
very high and honorable positions, kings and 
emperors sought their advice and the help of 
their prayers, the faithful flocked around them 
in thousands to testify their appreciation of the 
wonderful gifts with which God had endowed 
His chosen servants, yet those faithful disciples 
of the great Master of humility never took any 
honor to themselves, but gave it all to God, 
so fully and so completely, that they were 
able to acknowledge, with all sincerity and 
candor, that they were only useless servants. 
This they could do, difficult as it seems, be- 
cause they made a proper use of their will by 
submitting it entirely to the guidance and in- 
fluence of divine grace. 

As far as great honors are concerned, there 
is, thank God, very little danger for Religious, 
generally speaking. The world may respect 
them, or wonder at their retired and mortified 
lives; but at the same time it sees in them a 
steady and determined opposition to itself, 
and it resents that opposition. We have no 
reason, then, to be surprised that it should 
look upon all Religious as foolish people, who 
abandon and despise what the great majority 
of men seek for most eagerly. It is only 
natural for the world to know its enemies and 
to do all it can to overcome them ; but when 



Oti7' Own WilL 97 

it finds them too strong and too well supported 
by a Power that it cannot reach upon, then it 
takes refuge in its last intrenchments, and tries 
to heap ridicule on all who follow the evangeli- 
cal counsels. This opposition of the world is 
a great blessing for Religious ; it shows them 
the worthlessness and vanity of what they 
have renounced, and it teaches them to con- 
centrate their desires in God and in the holy 
Vocation to which He has called them. Be- 
sides, the life of a good Religious is the living 
expression and a continuation of the warfare 
that our Lord Jesus Christ commenced to 
wage, during His life, on worldly maxims and 
principles. 

But though we may leave the great world 
and its honors outside the gate of the convent, 
though we may sincerely dread and avoid any 
sign of honor that would betray us into an 
exhibition of a worldly spirit, yet w^e have a 
smaller world within us which is a miniature of 
the larger one outside. It is the world of our 
own hearts, of our own desires and opinions ; 
it has its own code of honor, its own laws and 
maxims, and its own means too of deceiving 
and leading us astray. 

It is by means of this little world that the 
devil contrives to ^ive another characteristic 
mark to our wilL when we turn it away frorn 



98 Our Own Will. 

the service of God. For he persuades us to 
listen to various suggestions bearing on our 
self-esteem, and leads us on to adopt and fol- 
low the conclusions that naturally follow from 
them. Thus he gives us an exaggerated idea 
of our natural powers, and fills us with a spirit 
of independence, so that we grow more and 
more in our own estimation, at the expense of 
the esteem and respect that we owe to our 
Superiors and Sisters. Obedience soon loses its 
hold on us, and from being irregular and careless 
in our outward duties, we begin gradually to 
put off the spirit of submission, to assert our 
own ideas boldly, and to put forward our own 
views, although they in no way harmonize with 
the Religious Life and its obligations. Having 
gone thus far, it is easy to go a step farther, 
and to criticise and condemn everything that 
does not chime in with the conceited notions 
we have of ourselves. The influence of faith 
is thus gradually lessened in the soul, because 
we substitute for it a creation of our own, the 
good opinion w^e have of ourselves, and, as we 
leave our reason without a proper guide, we 
must only expect to fall into many gross ab- 
surdities of speech and action. '' He that ex- 
alteth himself shall be humbled ;" the Religious 
who refuses to give her will to God, and who 
therefore leaves it in the power of the devil, 



Our Own WilL 99 

must learn by bitter experience that pride 
brings its own punishment, not merely in the 
next life, but in this also. 

But where does the proud Religious get the 
honor that puffs her up? From herself, nor 
would she value it half as much from any other 
source. Her whole idea is self-sufficiency and 
independence, her whole effort is to strengthen 
her false position by every argument that self- 
esteem can suggest : these arguments she draws 
principally from her own fertile imagination, 
assisted by the deceits of the devil; whatever 
help she may get from other quarters, in the 
shape of praise or flattery, is only a matter of 
secondary import to her ; she values it merely 
as a confirmation of her own judgment regard- 
ing herself. In such circumstances her out- 
ward acts betray, by their absurdity and incon- 
sistency, the selfish and unworthy motives that 
dictate them. For she is filled with herself to 
such an extent, that she is incapable of looking 
beyond her own desires, so as to understand 
the real relations that exist between herself 
and her Superiors and Sisters. She imagines 
that they are all inferior to her, that they 
cannot see things in the proper light, and of 
course, she suspects them of acting with selfish 
motives. Any little service she renders is 
grudgingly bestowed, because she values her 



lOO Oitr Own Will. 

own qualities so highly, that she is certain of 
her actions not being properly appreciated by 
others. As the spirit of self-esteem grows 
upon her, she becomes more daring in her 
criticisms, more outspoken in her fault-finding, 
until at last no arrangement of authority can 
escape her, and, if she once allows the evil in- 
fluence to become habitual, she gives way to 
settled dissatisfaction and discontent with her 
Superiors, wishing herself in their place, so 
that she might make whatever changes in their 
administration her wounded and insatiable 
vanity suggests. 

It is a pitiful thing to think that a Spouse of 
Jesus Christ can descend so low, and make her- 
self the laughing-stock and the tool of Satan, 
because she does not wish to give up her own 
will. Yet this degraded state is the natural 
consequence of rejecting the precious graces of 
the Religious Life. '* To whom much is given, 
from him much shall be expected ;" and if we 
fail to render to God what He has a right to ex- 
pect from us, it is only just that our degrada- 
tion and punishment should exceed that of 
people in the world, who, generally speaking, 
are not so richly endowed with supernatural 
gifts as those who leave the world for God*s 
sake. It is, after all, a surprising thing that 
we should be so inclined to esteem and honor 



Oiir Ozvn WilL loi 

ourselves. Our miseries of body and soul are 
so many that they must obtrude themselves on 
our notice, no matter how zealously we may 
strive to forget them. We have been so often 
disappointed, Vv^e have made so many mistakes 
and suffered from so many failures, that we 
might well be willing to place ourselves alto- 
gether under the guidance of any one who is 
willing to take the responsibility of directing 
us ; yet, in spite of what reason and experience 
teach us, we have such a strong inclination to 
support our own individuality, to look upon 
our own existence as being perfect and inde- 
pendent in itself, that, when we yield to this 
inclination, we resent as an injury and an in- 
sult every attempt made by others to control 
our actions, although we have already given 
them the best and holiest title to that control 
by the vow of obedience. Certainly the last 
place in the world to look for self-esteem should 
be a convent. The community life shows, by 
its wonderful advantages, how empty and vain 
i ^ that overweening sense of one's own individu- 
ality, and it teaches us how to gain true honor 
by sinking our own petty desires and trivial 
fancies in the great designs of God\s mercy 
towards the human race. But, on the other 
hand, the least act of self-esteem in a convent 
shows itself in far more glaring colors than if it 



I02 Oiti' Own Will, 

were committed in the world, precisely on ac- 
count of the utter incompatibility between the 
Religious Life and the uncontrolled pursuit of 
our own desires. It is a common thing enough 
for lay-people to criticise their Superiors and 
not to see any great harm in so doing, because 
the connection between them is, very often, a 
mere matter of temporal convenience, which 
neither seek to refer to a spiritual object ; but 
the relations between a Religious and her Su- 
periors are so sacred, that any violation or dis- 
regard of them argues a great perversity of 
will. So that when a Religious goes so far as 
to criticise her Superiors, she proves that, what- 
ever she may be worth in her own eyes, she is 
worth little or nothing in the sight of God or 
of His Church, because she is too much taken 
up with herself to be of any use. 

Another mark of inordinate self-esteem, is 
given by the Religious who is constantly find- 
ing fault with her Sisters. Nothing that they 
do can please her ; she is able to suggest im- 
provements in every act of theirs, and she 
shows a malicious ingenuity in interpreting 
their most harmless expressions in some un- 
charitable sense. A Religious of that kind is 
so puffed up with the honor that she pays her 
own fancied excellence, that she makes herself 
a positive plague to the community. Yet she 



Our Own WilL 1 03 

is useful in one way, for she serves to exercise 
the patience and meekness of her Sisters, who 
have to bear with her fault-finding and con- 
ceited manner. Superiors should be careful 
never to entrust a Religious of that kind with 
any obedience that would give her authority 
over her Sisters. She who cannot govern even 
the meanest tendencies of her nature is surely 
not fit to have anything to do with the guidance 
or direction of others ; she is even very likely 
to do a great deal of harm by bad example, for 
if the unfortunate Sisters who have to submit 
to her see that she acts through vain and self- 
ish motives, they may very readily learn to 
imitate her. She should therefore be kept, 
as far as possible, occupied with some duty 
that will not give her much time or opportu- 
nity for fault-finding, or for spreading the evil 
influence of her bad example. Nor should any 
trust be reposed in her until she gives unmis- 
takable signs of improvement and heartfelt 
repentance, otherwise Superiors will find out 
to their cost that the devil can easily use such 
a conceited Religious as a tool to work mis- 
chief amongst her Sisters. 

As we have seen already, a convent is spe- 
cially protected by the Almighty God from the 
assaults of worldly honor and ambition, and if a 
Religious gets self-conceited it is because she is 



I04 Oitr Own WilL 

guilty of gross carelessness and injustice in re- 
fusing her will to God. But, even in the con- 
vent, there is a still more privileged position, 
the very surroundings of which seem to offer 
an impenetrable barrier to anything like self- 
esteem — that is, the position of the Lay-Sister.* 
She, whose happy lot it is to perform, as an 
everyday task, the most humble duties of the 
convent, has it in her power, with the help 
of divine grace, to live in the closest con- 
formity with the Hidden Life of Jesus. She 
has no lack of opportunities of practising 
humility and submission to others for the love 
of God. With a little care, generally speaking, 
she can so accustom herself to the mortification 
of her own will, that instead of following her 
own ideas and opinions, she finds the greatest 
comfort and consolation in knowing that she 
is enabled to ^Meny herself and to carry her 
cross*' courageously, after the example of her 
Divine Master. Thus the possession of peace 
of soul is rendered easy and certain to her : 
her duties, no matter how trivial they seem 
outwardly, acquire an immense value in the 

* This term may seem strange to many of our American 
readers. Our authority for using it is the universal custom 
in all European countries, where the Lay-Sister has a recog- 
nized position in Religion, and where special provision is 
made for her in the Constitution of many orders. 



Our Own Will. T05 

Sight of God, for they are performed solely 
with a view to please Him ; and the humility 
which pervades all her actions renders them of 
the greatest utility, not only to her own com- 
munity, but to the Church at large. For it is 
by humility that Christ began the great battle 
of the Church against the world, and it is by 
humility that He wishes that battle to be con- 
tinued. What can He not do, then, what 
glorious victories may He not gain, in the 
person of the Lay-Sister who is thoroughly 
penetrated with the spirit of her holy Voca- 
tion I It was to glorify Himself in her that 
God called her to a state of life, which may 
be termed, preeminently, the state of humility. 
It is true that Choir-Sisters are also bound to 
practise that most necessary virtue, and that 
they get all the necessary graces to practise it 
according to the perfection of their state ; but 
they have to do many things that might excite 
some movement of self-esteem, if they are not 
very cautious ; for they have to teach in the 
schools, to study profane literature, and, in 
many instances, they may be obliged to deal 
with people in the world. Now, although 
such occupations are absolutely necessary, and 
are sanctified by the grace of Vocation and 
obedience, yet the Religious who is engaged 
in them must be continually on the alert lest 



io6 Oitr Own Will, 

the enemy of her soul should take occasion 
from them to fill her with proud thoughts and 
to turn her will away from God. From these 
dangers the Lay-Sister is free ; her position 
makes it a matter of necessity for her to study 
the mortification of her own will in all things, 
so that her position is, to a great extent, a 
privileged one. She should, therefore, be all 
obedience, humility, and forgetfulness of self ; 
never should she dream of asserting herself 
in any way, by putting forward her own ideas 
and opinions, unless obedience or necessity ab- 
solutely requires it ; she should look upon it 
as a great favor to be enabled, by the grace of 
Vocation, to help and assist those whom God 
has chosen to do His special work, and she 
may rest assured that not one of her labors 
will go unrewarded, and that they will produce 
abundant fruits for the greater glory of God 
and the salvation of souls. 

But there is one danger peculiar to her posi- 
tion which the Lay-Sister must guard against 
— and that is, a servile spirit. She must 
never forget that she is not a mere hireling, 
but a Spouse of Jesus Christ, the great King of 
heaven and earth, and therefore she must not 
perform her duties in a time-serving spirit, or 
with the idea o-f merely gaining the favor and 
approbation of her Superiors. It is a good 



Our Own Will. 107 

thing indeed if her Superiors approve of her, 
but she must value their approbation only be- 
cause they are the representatives of the Al- 
mighty; for if she were to seek their favor 
for any other m.otive, she would act as any 
servant in the world might, who hopes to ad- 
vance her own temporal interests by pleasing 
her mistress. This time-serving and unworthy 
spirit is also a frequent cause of jealousy and 
envy, and is a deadly foe to sisterly charity ; it 
opens a wide door to Satan, who enters by it 
into the soul of the poor Lay-Sister, takes 
possession of her will, and fills it with vain and 
idle desires of honor and distinction, until she 
becomes ''puffed up in honors,'' in spite of the 
special protection with which God has sur- 
rounded her. Let her then labor to have a 
proper spirit ; she can learn it without educa- 
tion or study ; she has only to open her heart 
and direct her will to receive the divine inspi- 
rations, and she will soon learn that there are 
no worldly distinctions in the convent, and 
she will understand and appreciate the equality 
and liberty, greater and more precious than 
any the world ever had, that ought to reign 
among the Spouses of Christ. 

Quite the opposite to the position of the 
Lay-Sister is that of the Superioress of a con- 
vent. The responsibility for the eternal wel- 



io8 Our Own Will, 

fare of others is a very heavy one, and it would 
be quite unbearable if God did not give Supe- 
riors powerful graces to help them. All Su- 
periors, therefore, should remember this, and 
never trust in themselves or \\\ their own abili- 
ties, but solely in the goodness and power of 
God. And this remark applies to all who have 
any office or charge in the convent, that makes 
them responsible, in any way, for the spiritual 
welfare of their Sisters, or even of the children 
w^hose education and training are entrusted to 
their care. 

A certain effect of following our own will is 
the loss of confidence in God and a vain pre- 
sumption on our own natural gifts, as if we could 
attempt and accomplish great things relying 
on ourselves alone. When, w^ith all our natu- 
ral faults and weaknesses, we are placed in a 
position of authority over others, oh ! how^ 
easily then do we not conceive great things of 
ourselves, how readily do we not look for the 
fruit of our industry or our talents in the suc- 
cesses gained by the convent, how impatient 
and dissatisfied we become, if we see our un- 
dertakings fail and our hopes disappointed! 
And it is so easy to excuse all these miseries, 
that come from our own will, by attributing 
them to zeal in the service of God, and to an 
anxiety to further the w^elfare of the commu- 



Our Own IVilL 109 

nity ! That perverse will of ours is very cun- 
ning, it knows how to secrete itself in the hid- 
den folds of our natural inclinations, and it is 
ready at any moment to sally forth from its 
hiding-place and to seize upon our good ac- 
tions, to vitiate them, and render them useless 
in the sight of God. And how Satan rages 
against us if he sees that we are responsible 
for the souls of others! How he employs all 
his wiles and deceits to persuade us to withdraw 
our will from God, and to use our authority 
according to our own natural inclinations, 
solely ! For if he succeeds, he can transform 
even the good qualities of our nature into 
vices, by leading them on to excess or defect. 
Thus, if a Superioress who follows her own 
will, without seeking the will of God, is natu- 
rally of a stern disposition, the tempter can 
easily induce her to be harsh and uncharitable 
to her Sisters ; if she is of an easy, yielding 
character, he can persuade her to be careless 
and over-indulgent ; and in either case he can 
make use of her as an instrument to work his 
wicked will, to relax discipline and to make 
obedience imperfect in the convent. Supe- 
riors, therefore, more than all others, must 
have a thorough contempt for themselves, they 
must *' empty themselves,'* after the example 
of their Heavenly Spouse, and they must look 



1 1 o Our Own IVilL 

upon the complete mortification of their own 
will as the only means by which they can pre- 
pare to render a satisfactory account of their 
stewardship. For, they cannot do any good 
of themselves, no matter how gifted they may 
be, and their efforts should be concentrated on 
the great task of not preventing or spoiling, 
by their caprices, the good that Divine Provi- 
dence has elected to do through their instru- 
mentality. Hence they must be suspicious of 
themselves and afraid of their own will. 

But does not this tend to render their action 
cramped and restrained, so that, instead of 
giving their Sisters an example of cheerfulness 
and joy in the service of God, they are likely, 
rather, to encourage scruples, anxieties, and 
apathy, by a continual preoccupation of spirit 
wath the dangers of their position? By no 
means; for, if we are suspicious of ourselves, 
it is because our whole trust is in God, who 
wall not let us be confounded ; if we fear our 
own will, it is because _we love the will of God 
and seek to accomplish it in all our actions, 
and ''the will of God is our sanctification,'* and 
the cause of all spiritual joy and peace; if we 
direct all our efforts to clear away the obstacles 
that our nature offers to the work of Grace in 
our souls, the result must be the mortification 
of our own will, and consequently the perfec- 



I 



Our Own VVilL 1 1 1 

tioii of our holy state, than which no greater 
happiness can be conceived. Oh no ! it is not 
the mortified, humble Superioress who lacks 
energy in the divine service, or gives her Sis- 
ters cause for discouragement. It is the world- 
ly-minded, self-willed Superioress, who looks 
upon the accomplishment of her own will as 
the great object of her life, so that she is over- 
indulgent to her Sisters, when their faults chime 
in with hers, and injudiciously severe with 
them if they attempt to cross her inclination, 
even in matters of minor importance — she it 
is who introduces the spirit of the world into 
the convent, and discourages her Sisters. But 
since we all have the germs of worldliness in 
us, since we all have a great attachment to our 
natural likes and dislikes, and this attachment 
often remains with us up to the last moment 
of our lives, I repeat that every Superioress 
must be watchful over herself. No matter how 
long she is in the convent, or what sacrifices 
she has made, or how well her Sisters are pro- 
gressing under her motherly care, she must 
keep a guard over herself and be well exercised 
in self-restraint, in thought, w^ord, and act, or 
else she may expect the choicest blessings of 
Divine Providence to be turned into severe 
trials and temptations for her, through self- 
complacency and vanity. 



1 1 2 Our Own Will 

First of all, she must be careful how she 
deals with her Sisters. If she has not a real 
motherly and supernatural love for every one 
of them, despite their faults and imperfections, 
let her ask it from God with all the fervor 
possible, and not cease asking until her request 
is granted ; for otherwise she is not fit to be 
the representative of the loving Jesus, who so 
highly prizes those whom she cares so little for. 
She must also open her mind to her Confessor, 
and follow his advice with the utmost dili- 
gence ; nothing will help her so much as obedi- 
ence, because this want of motherly love can 
easily be traced to pride and self-conceit. 
Besides loving all her sisters equally, she must 
respect them : if she fails to do so, she is want- 
ing in proper respect for the position in which 
she herself is placed by the authority of the 
Church ; and besides, she cannot but expect to 
be punished by our Divine Lord if she does 
not treat His Spouses with a due consideration 
for the dignity conferred on them by Him. 
Yet she must avoid anything like stiffness or 
constraint In dealing with her Sisters, for other- 
wise she will never win their confidence, nor 
be able to help them in their difficulties. If 
she is too fond of talking, and too effusive in 
her speech or manner, she will find it a difficult 
matter to maintain her authority properly. 



Our Own Will. 1 1 3 

She should have a great horror of favoritism 
and of anything savoring of an attachment to 
her own will, that would give her Sisters the 
idea that she cares for some more than for 
others. If she finds herself naturally inclined 
to preferences of this sort, she must fight 
against herself without truce or mercy, if she 
does not want to introduce the spirit of the 
world, with its false and hurtful maxims, into 
the convent. 

She must be watchful over herself, too, in her 
intercourse with people of the world, no matter 
how holy or how mortified they are. There is 
an immense gulf between her and such people, 
which should prevent every approach to con- 
fidence or familiarity. She would have just 
cause for indignation if she saw any of her 
Sisters fond of talking with lay-people, and 
forming unnecessary acquaintances with them ; 
she is in the same position as her Sisters, in 
this respect, with this sole difference, that she 
has, as it were, to bear the brunt of the battle 
against the world, and to keep that great 
enemy of the spiritual life far away from the 
convent. Hence she must deal with lay- 
people very frequently. Pious ladies in the 
world are fond of coming to the convent to 
get away from the cares of life for a time at 
least, and to taste a little of the repose that 



114 Our Own Will, 

can never be found in the world; to visitors of 
this class she can do a great deal of good by 
a modest and well-restrained cheerfulness of 
manner, and by not spending too much time 
with them. For she is not bound to them in 
any particular way, nor is she responsible for 
their souls. Her time belongs to her Sisters, 
and every moment that she spends beyond the 
ordinary requirements of Christian charity and 
politeness, with lay-people, she may look upon 
as lost time, for which she will have to render 
account. It is certainly a very fascinating 
thing to be able to have a pious talk with an 
appreciative and wondering listener, who will 
be sure to retail the conversation afterward 
among her friends ; but these pious talks furnish 
such excellent opportunities for the devil to 
make us " puffed up in honors,*' that we should 
avoid them as much as possible unless with 
our Sisters, with whom there is very little 
danger of that kind. There is another class of 
ladies who are, unfortunately, very fond of 
visiting convents. They are those who fancy 
themselves pious because they perform certain 
outward works of piety, while in reality they 
are filled w^ith self-conceit and worldliness. 
Such visitors as these come to the convent 
through a spirit of curiosity and fault-finding: 
if thev are able to detect anv fault in the 



Otir Own Will. 1 1 5 

Superioress or her Sisters, their joy is complete, 
for they can easily then exalt their own virtue 
and find new cause for the good opinion they 
have of themselves. It goes without saying 
that they find abundant matter for future 
gossip among their acquaintances in every 
little fault they discover in the conv^ent, and 
that such faults are not at all lessened by the 
charity which they pretend to plaster over them. 
Such ladies as these are a plague to convents: 
they cannot be excluded altogether; but one 
comfort, at least, is that the Superioress will 
easily detect visitors of this class, so that she 
can be on her guard against them. Finally, 
there is the lady of the world, who makes and 
can make no pretence to piety, and who visits 
the convent because she has some friend or 
relative there, or through some reason of 
worldly bienseance. Of course she brings all 
the tittle-tattle of the day with her, and, if she 
is encouraged, she is quite ready to discuss the 
latest scandal. If she sees that her frivolous 
and uncharitable conversation is listened to, 
she will come again and repeat the dose with 
additions, until in a short time the convent 
will become the best place of all in which to 
learn everything about other people's business. 
A wise and prudent Superioress can easily save 
her convent from a misfortune of that kind, by 



1 1 6 Otir Own Will, 

showing plainly how distasteful such conver- 
sations are to her, and by never allowing her 
Sisters to be present at them or to take part in 
them. In fact, she must keep her Sisters away 
from all unnecessary visits as much as possible, 
if she desires them to have the true spirit of 
religion ; and she must be particularly strict in 
enforcing the due observance of the time al- 
lowed by her Constitutions or the order of the 
house for seeing visitors. She has to bear in 
mind that the convent has nothing to hope for 
from the world, and nothing to fear from it 
either, unless the world introduces itself into the 
convent, in which case there is an end of the 
Religious Life. 

Superiors should therefore look upon them- 
selves as their own worst enemies ; they must 
carefully scrutinize every opinion they form, 
lest their own will should have too great a 
share in it, and if they find on examination 
that their opinion happens to be right, they 
must give the credit of it to God's grace and 
not to their own cleverness. Above all, they 
must not expect that they will never make a 
mistake. ^'To err is human/' and one of the 
clearest proofs that we are " puffed-up in 
honors'' is the fact that we never believe our- 
selves to be in the WTong; for by such a 
belief we at once place ourselves far above 



Our Own WilL 1 1 7 

ordinary mortals, in our own idea. Nor is 
there any loss of dignity or authority involved 
in acknowledging that we have been mistaken. 
On the contrary, there is nothing so pleasing 
to God and so edifying to our Sisters as the 
humble confession of our infirmity, coupled 
with a sincere trust in the infinite mercy of 
God, who is quite good enough and powerful 
enough to rectify all our blunders. 

A Superioress who does her best to have a 
pure intention of doing all for the greater glory 
of God should have great confidence in the 
grace of state— that is to say, in those precious 
supernatural helps that God gives, primarily 
and principally, for the good of her sisters, 
secondarily, and as it were accidentally, for her 
own good, provided she corresponds with 
them. She cannot doubt for a moment that 
such graces are given to her. How many times 
has she not been able to solve a difficulty, to 
overcome an obstacle, to strengthen and con- 
sole her Sibters, in a manner far exceeding any- 
thing she could pretend to by her natural 
abilities alone! The proper words seem to have 
come to her lips without any mental effort on 
her part ; the truth was made evident to her 
with a clearness surpassing anything that she 
could learn by mere study ; her natural dread of 
consequences disappeared as if by magic, and 



ii8 Our Oivn WUL 

gave place to a courageous and almost heroic 
resolution to do the will of God at all hazards. 
She must believe that such glorious victories 
over the infirmities of nature are the result of 
divine grace, and in particular of the grace of 
state that God gives to her as Superioress. 
Let her then trust to that grace, and not offend 
the Almighty by believing that His arm is 
shortened, or that He is no longer willing to 
protect her. To make sure that this confi- 
dence is practical, she must accustom herself 
to reason from the general principles of the 
faith, so that she may more easily and securely 
be able to direct her actions according to the 
spirit of her Rules and Constitutions. Nor is 
there a profound knowledge of theology re- 
quired for this. She has the general principles 
of the faith in her Catechism ; let them once 
sink deeply into her mind, and the faith will 
soon begin to exercise its proper influence over 
her. She will then see, clearer and clearer, the 
connection between her Rule and Constitu- 
tions, and the truths revealed by God to His 
Church ; thus she will be saved, not merely from 
making her own opinions the Rule of her 
actions, but also from a too worldly prudence, 
or perhaps we should call it cunning, which 
looks very bad indeed in one who has left the 
world to follow Christ. Prudence she must 



Otcr Own Will. 119 

have, but it should be the prudence of the 
Gospel, which is often folly in the eyes of the 
world. Worldly prudence is satisfied to judge 
from the outside, and to act with a view to 
please men and to gain their good opinion ; 
it often asks itself, What will people think if 
I do so and so? whereas the prudence of the 
Gospel considers the real value of a thing, 
namely, what it is worth in the sight of God, 
and it troubles itself little about the praise of 
men, provided the will of God is accomplished. 
It is this kind of prudence that gained so many 
glorious victories for the Catholic Church; it 
is to this kind of prudence that so many con- 
vents owe their existence, and a prosperous 
one too, in spite of the opposition that bigotry 
and prejudice placed in their way. Every con- 
vent has difficulties to contend with, for we 
cannot expect the world to allow its deadliest 
foe, the Religious Life, to escape its attacks. 
In fact these difficulties are a sign of a vigor- 
ous spiritual life in the convent, and they are 
bound to result to the glory of God and of the 
Catholic Church, if the Superioress combats 
them, not with a worldly prudence nor w^ith 
confidence in her own opinion or her own 
abilities, but with the prudence of the Gospel, 
which carefully uses all the means at its dis- 
posal to insure success while it expects the 



1 20 Our Ozvn Will, 

success itself from no other source than the 
goodness and power of God. 

Hence Superiors are bound in a special man- 
ner not to allow themselves to be swayed by 
their own will. Their position renders any at- \ 
tempt at self-esteem very dangerous, because 
if they once get '^puffed up in honors/' it will 
be exceedingly difficult to cure them again, and 
to bring them to a proper degree of humility. 
Besides that, they must be careful to avoid 
any preoccupation of spirit, or any self-seeking, 
even in spiritual matters, that would hinder 
them from submitting at once to the graces of 
state. They know not what exigencies may 
arise at any moment which their natural abili- 
ties are unable to deal with; they must, conse- 
quently, always keep themselves free, so that 
the divine inspirations may find a ready en- 
trance into their hearts. Thus it is evident that 
without great poverty of spirit a Superioress 
cannot hope to do much for her community; 
that is to sa)^ she must have a great desire to 
know everything that God wishes her to know, 
regarding herself and her Sisters, while she care- 
fully represses every act of curiosity dictated 
by selfishness or idle anxiety. May God grant 
all Superiors the grace never to forget the 
meek and humble Jesus whom they represent, 
and His holy and immaculate Mother, under 



Our Own WilL 121 

whose patronage and after whose example they 
have undertaken to conquer the devil, the 
world, and the flesh ! 

It is needless to say any more on this second 
characteristic of our own will. If we learn 
from our Superiors or from a divine inspira- 
tion that we are *' puffed up in honors/' both 
reason and conscience suggest that we should at 
once set about curing that dangerous spiritual 
illness, for as long as we suffer from it we cannot 
attain perfection. A great part of the cure con- 
sists in being thoroughly convinced that we 
i^equire it ; if wx hesitate in believing the di- 
vine inspirations, or doubt what our Superiors 
tell us, our efforts will be only half-hearted, be- 
cause they are not founded on conviction, and 
of course they will be unsuccessful. But when 
we have obtained the first point of vantage 
over our self-conceit, by humbly submitting 
our judgment and confessing our infirmity, we 
may be certain that God will accomplish what 
He has so happily begun, and that "' the right 
hand of the Most High " will soon work a won- 
derful change in us. 

There are, however, a few precautions that 
we must not fail to take. In the first place, we 
must keep our good resolution alive by con- 
sidering the danger of self-conceit, and how the 
justice of God compels Him to punish the ar- 



122 Our Ci^ni Will. 

rogant mortal who tries to defraud Him of the 
honor that is due to Him. The danger is surely 
great enough, once we see it clearly, to fill us 
with a desire to avoid it ; and the thought of 
being subject to the anger of God ought to 
give us a proper horror of deliberate venial sin, 
which we commit over and over again if we 
are '' puffed up in honors." We cannot over- 
rate the good effect of a sincere resolution to 
amend our lives. Not only does it come 
from a proper detestation of past sin, but it 
immediately suggests heartfelt repentance in 
case we fall again through weakness, or forget 
ourselves through force of habit. Bad acts of 
the will must be cured and corrected by good 
ones proceeding from the same faculty, under 
the direction of divine grace ; our former de- 
termination to seek honor for ourselves must 
be overcome and atoned for by a firm resolu- 
tion to seek only the glory of God for the 
future. 

In the second place, we must learn how to 
make frequent and sincere acts of humiliation. 
The Rule and Constitutions of the Order will 
no doubt supply us with many opportunities 
of humbling ourselves before our Superiors 
and Sisters ; we have to take advantage of 
ever}^ one of these, for if we allow one to 
escape through carelessness or unwillingness, 



Oitr Own Will, 123 

It IS a sign that our resolution is weak and un- 
certain, and that we are still attached to self- 
esteem. '' He who humbleth himself shall be 
exalted," says Our Lord ; if we desire to be 
raised to the perfection of our holy state we 
must lower ourselves in our own estimation, 
not merely by inward acts of the intellect and 
will, but also by outward acts, which give ex- 
pression to and help to intensify the desire that 
God has given us to be truly humble. On the 
other hand, the Religious who deliberately 
avoids the humiliations imposed upon her by 
the Constitutions of her Order, or by her 
Superioress, gives clear proof that she is pos- 
sessed by the spirit of pride and self-conceit, 
and she may take it for granted that she will 
make very little advancement towards perfec- 
tion until she submits to those humiliations 
and performs them in a spirit of humility and 
repentance. 

It would be difficult for us to exaggerate the 
good effect of the little penances and mortifica- 
tions that are imposed upon us in the convent, 
when we accept them with humility and obe- 
dience. They have, no doubt, an immense 
power of atoning for the past, because they 
constantly remind us of the necessity and 
value of repentance. Now, when repentance, 
instead of being evoked merely occasionally, 



124 Oicr Own WilL 

as, for instance, when we are going to confes- 
sion, or after our daily examen of conscience, 
becomes so habitual to us that we are im- 
bued with the spirit of it, it is clear that 
there may be hundreds of occasions during 
the day on which we make acts of sincere re- 
pentance for our sins, and that without any 
effort, but merely following the ruling desire of 
our hearts, v/hich prompts us to do what we 
can to atone for our past sins. But we know 
that, next after absolute sinlessness. sincere 
repentance is most pleasing to God ; nay, so 
powerful is it, that in a single moment a sinner 
may obtain pardon for the crimes of a whole 
lifetime. What must not, then, be its eflficacy in 
a Religious, a Spouse of Christ, who is so thor- 
oughly possessed by the spirit of sincere sor- 
row for sin that every act of her life is stamped 
with it, every deliberate thought reverts to it in 
some way or other. We have a certain and 
speedy way of acquiring this precious spirit, by 
being exact in performing the penances and 
submitting to the humiliations imposed upon 
us by the Constitutions, or by the commands 
of our Superiors. The great want of the 
world at the present day is penance ; the vast 
mass of humanity is engrossed w4th the pur- 
suit of honors, riches, and pleasures; there is 
no thought of mortification, no feeling of com- 



Our Own WilL 125 

passion for the sufferings of our Divine Lord, 
His Sacred Heart hungers and thirsts after 
some kindred spirit in which to find sympathy 
and gratitude, and active, ardent compassion 
with Its yearnings and longings ; but It is very 
often disappointed. Let not that be the case 
at least among the Spouses of Christ — amongst 
those who have vowed to take up the cross 
after our Lord, and to follow His example by 
dying to themselves and the world. 

Finally, if Superiors find that they are 
'' puffed up in honors/' whether their authority 
extends over the whole community or over 
only a part of it, they must take immediate 
thought for themselves and profit by the 
divine inspiration without loss of time. To 
do this, they must remember the trust placed 
in them by the Church; how the highest au- 
thority on earth has sanctioned their position, 
that they may spread the '' good odor of Christ ** 
among their Sisters and lead them on to per- 
fection by every means in their power, and how, 
in order to accomplish this great task, they 
must forget themselves and constantly mortify 
their own will. If, on the other hand, they 
allow their own will to get the better of them 
so as to be a habitual motive of their actions, 
then they violate the confidence reposed in 
them by the Church, the Mystic Body of 



126 Oiif^ Oivii IVilL 

Christ, and use their position and influence 
only to carry out their own selfish ends, and to 
gratify their vanity and self-conceit. By so 
doing, not only do they render their perfection 
impossible, but they place their souls' salvation 
in imminent danger, for they despise and neg- 
lect the ordinary graces given them by God, 
and increase their guilt by not using, with a 
proper intention, the many graces of state 
they receive. Pot entes pot enter tormenta patieii- 
tur is the terrible warning pronounced against 
Superiors who prefer their own interests to the 
will of God and the spiritual welfare of their 
subjects : they shall be punished all the more 
severely, as their responsibility was greater, 
and their obligation to seek the glory of God 
more stringent. On the other hand, the Supe- 
rioress who is faithful to her duty and forgetful 
of self, who is filled with the spirit of repent- 
ance and humility, and who really loves all her 
Sisters with a supernatural love, and respects 
and reverences them as the Spouses of Jesus 
Christ — she indeed may comfort herself with 
the blessed assurance that the divine promises 
will be fulfilled in her in due time, and that 
she will merit to hear from the lips of her 
Judge the consoling words, ''Well done, thou 
good and faithful servant ! because thou hast 
been faithful over few things, I will place thee 
over many : enter into the joy of thy Lord." 



Our OwnWilL ii"] 

We shall finish this Chapter with the follow* 
ing extract from Father de Ponte (Pars. IIL 
Medit. XII.): '^Although this duty," of being 
the salt of the earth, which may be affirmed of 
all Superiors, '' is a gratuitous gift of God, yet 
its preservation depends also on our free will : 
wherefore, he who is once made the salt of the 
earth, although if he duly performs his office 
he is worthy of being admitted to the table of 
the Lord, to His own great honor, yet if he 
becomes elated by pride, he melts away and 
loses his savor ; so that he must be cast 
out on the dunghill of the world, away from 
the protection of God, where to his great dis- 
grace he is trodden under foot by men, and 
afterwards by the demons in hell. When I 
think of these things, I must also consider 
whether that salt is in me, with what savor I 
serve God, in what manner I perform the 
office of salt to those committed to my care, 
and whether I try to render virtue savory and 
agreeable to all. O most sweet Jesus! make 
me the salt of the earth, although I should 
have to pass through fire and water; do not 
allow me to give scandal to the world, instead 
of that condiment of salt, or that it should 
become barren, through my fault, like earth 
sown with salt, or that I should turn to its 
detriment the office that you committed to me 
for its advantage." 



128 Oiu^ Own WilL 



CHAPTER XL 

OUR OWN WILL IS ANXIOUS IN CARES. 

One of the first truths that dawn upon us, 
after we have learned the existence of God, is 
that there must be some relations between us 
and the great and infinitely good Being to whom 
we ow^e our existence and preservation. With 
the development of our understanding, these 
relations gradually shape themselves into form, 
until we are able to say that God is our Father, 
our Judge, our Protector and Provider. But 
more distinctly than all do we recognize that 
God is our wSupreme Ruler, to whom we should 
belong body and soul, according to whose will 
our whole lives should be regulated* Nor does 
it require any mental effort to understand all 
these relations between us and God. They 
come to our minds by a sort of intuition, they 
are strengthened by the voice of conscience 
that begins to make itself heard with the first 
dawnings of reason, they are developed and 
perfected by the subsequent instruction that 
wx receive, until we begin at last to see that as 



OiLT Own Will. 129 

God is the beginning and the end of our exist- 
ence, so should He also be the beginning and 
the end of every deliberate act, thought, and 
word of our lives. Thus we learn that there is 
a Divine Providence that arranges all things, 
and that we have to submit to this Providence, 
and to adore Its wonderful and all-perfect de- 
crees, with all the love and tender confidence 
that we owe to a most loving Father and to a 
most wise and provident Ruler. 

These relations between us and our Creator 
are not necessary to His happiness or well- 
being, for God did not create us because He 
stood in need of us ; but they are absolutely 
necessary to us ; for what could we do without 
God.^ How could we prevent ourselves from 
falling back into our original nothingness, if 
His Almighty Arm were not stretched out con- 
stantly to save and preserve us and keep us in 
existence? God could destroy us, if He chose, 
nor would He be one whit less happy or less 
perfect if He did so; whereas we cannot live 
for a moment without Him, nor have we any 
strength, or beauty, or knowledge that we have 
not received from Him. Thus it is evident 
that the Almighty takes an interest in His 
creatures, and that it is H^is pleasure to guide 
and direct their actions and movements, in ad- 
dition to supplying them with the power to act 



130 Our Own Will. 

and to move. This directing influence of God 
must necessarily tend to support harmony 
among His creatures, in spite of the vast and 
innumerable differences that there are amongst 
them ; it must ensure order, although different 
creatures have different tendencies and differ- 
ent natures, and it would cause a general and 
universal well-being, if there were not some 
creatures who use their powers to counteract 
the beneficent influence of God's Providence, 
and to replace good by evil and order by con- 
fusion. 

Where an Infinite Being uses His power in 
favor of a certain class of finite beings, we have 
reason to believe that His power extends to 
every individual of that class ; and so when we 
see proofs of Divine Providence ruling any 
earthly creature or event, we may safely con- 
clude that It governs the world, and that noth- 
ing can happen without Its command or per- 
mission. Further, although this truth is a very 
sublime one, it is not altogether beyond our 
grasp ; our intellects are suited to understand 
universal truths, or, at all events, they have a 
tendency towards the universal. Hence, al- 
though we may not be able to explain many 
particular arrangements of Providence, yet we 
cannot be ignorant of the general truth that 
God takes an active interest in the movements 



Our Ozv7i Will, 131 

and actions of His creatures. But knowledge 
brings its obligation with it; every blessing of 
light and grace that we receive from On High 
is intended for our sanctification and for the 
manifestation of the Divine Perfections ; so 
that, when we know that God is doing some- 
thing for us, our duty is, clearly, to work with 
Him and to bring our faculties, and especially 
our will, into conformity with His wilL Nor 
must we desire, when doing so, to know more 
of His action than He is pleased to declare to 
us, otherwise we encroach on His province, 
and deserve to be called presumptuous. Be- 
sides, how could we hope to gain any knowl- 
edge against the will of God? And if we 
could gain it, it would not help us, for we can- 
not control his actions, nor can we take better 
care of our own interests than He can. Thus 
the relations between us and our Creator are in 
no way derogatory to our dignity as human 
beings, nor do they offer any violence to our 
reason ; on the contrary, they perfect and sus- 
tain our dignity, and bear upon them the un- 
deniable impress of the good and the true 
about which our reason is most concerned. If 
we listen to reason, therefore, we readily leave 
the guiding influence to God ; we do not wish 
to interfere with it, but rather submit to it, and 
are glad that the Almighty deigns to interest 



132 Ozir Ow7z Will. 

Himself in our affairs. This act of reason calls 
forth a corresponding act of the will, which we 
term confidence, and which might be looked 
upon as a sort of intensification of faith. 

There can be no doubt that when we ad- 
vance so far as to place our fate thus complete- 
ly in the hands of God, He will take care to 
fulfil His promises and will not allow us to be 
confounded. In this way, not only does rea- 
son, helped of course by divine grace, show us 
where our perfection is to be found, but also it 
points out an easy road to it that will lead us 
onward safely and surely, and will free us from 
many a useless anxiety, and from the doubts 
and perturbations that would surely assail us 
if we followed any other path. In this confi- 
dence, too, we find the explanation of that per- 
fect obedience that brought so many good 
Religious to a high degree of holiness, and 
shed such a bright lustre on the Catholic 
Church. For this confidence leaves the rela- 
tions between us and God undisturbed ; by it 
we recognize Him as our Ruler, and are satis- 
fied with His guidance, while we carefully re- 
move out of the way anything of our own that 
might hinder the work of His grace in our 
souls. 

But to secure all these advantages we must 
employ our will properly and learn to devote 



Oicr Own WilL 133 

it altogether to the service of God ; for, if we 
are attached to our own will and obey its be- 
hests, we disturb the relations that ought to 
exist between us and God. Hence, another 
characteristic of our own will is, that it is 
'' anxious in cares/' We have now to see how 
this characteristic manifests itself in our con- 
duct. 

The essential object of the Religious Life is 
to refer us to God, and to impress well upon 
us that we are responsible to Him for our ac- 
tions and that we receive from Him whatever 
helps are necessary to perform those actions 
properly. Everything that is opposed to the 
Religious Life and to its object endeavors to 
withdraw us from God, to refer us to ourselves 
alone, and to conceal from us, as far as possi- 
ble, the responsibility for our actions, by rep- 
resenting to us that if these actions suit our 
inclinations and tastes they are good enough ; 
thus, also, we are at last induced to believe 
that God is not inclined to help us, or that 
His help is to be obtained only with difficulty. 
Hence arise discouragement and anxiety, be- 
cause we are thrown upon ourselves too much ; 
and we are of course unable, without super- 
natural help, to conquer the many difficulties 
and temptations that assail us during life. 
Nor can the doctrine of Divine Providence 



134 Our Ozvn Will. 

console us under such circumstances, inasmuch 
as, although as Catholics we believe in it, yet 
our faith is not lively enough to have a practi- 
cal and habitual influence over our ways of 
thought and action. Where the guidance of 
faith is wanting, we are liable to become the 
sport and plaything of events; creatures rule 
our destiny, apparently at least, for we refuse 
to see the hand of God in anything that hap- 
pens to us; and of course it will not be long 
before troubles and anxieties come to disturb 
and worry us. Thus our ow^n will makes us 
*' anxious in cares.** 

But where are we to look for cares in a con- 
vent ? Cares generally accompany w^orldly busi- 
ness and occupations; how can they be where 
the world is not admitted } Very easily, for 
they come in a spiritual form, and are quite as 
well able to disturb us in that way, and to rob 
us of our peace of mind, as material anxieties 
can vex and harass people in the world. 
Wherever our own will is, there must be un- 
easiness and care, because the foundation of 
true confidence in God is destroyed, and we 
have only ourselves to trust to. Let any Re- 
ligious who has suffered from anxiety or want 
of peace consult her own experience, and, if 
she traces the evil to its cause, she will find 
that it arose from her ignoring the action of 



II 



I 



Our Own WilL 135 

God in the events that happened to her, be- 
cause that action did not suit her tastes or in- 
clinations. The ways of God are not always 
known to us; we must be often content to sub- 
mit to His arrangements, without knowing any 
more about them than that He does everything 
for His own greater glory and for our sane- 
tification and perfection. But, if we give our 
own will the preponderance over the graces of 
our holy state, we cannot expect to have spir- 
itual strength enough to overcome the diffi- 
culties in our way, or spiritual enlightenment 
enough to see that those difficulties are per- 
mitted by God with the intention, not of in- 
terfering between us and the accomplishment 
of His will, but of rendering our efforts to 
serve Him more meritorious to ourselves and 
more pleasing in His sight. 

But the self-willed Religious does not see 
things in that light. She has got her own 
opinions to guide her, and nothing will con- 
vince her against them. It is useless for her 
Superiors to argue with her ; she will not listen 
to them; and while she is groaning under the 
spiritual trials that weigh her down, she refuses 
to make the only sacrifice that would certainly 
free her from them — the sacrifice of her own 
will. Thus she becomes *' anxious in cares,'* 
and gets so involved in difficulties of her own 



136 Oii7^ Own Will, 



^ 



making" that her life becomes a burden to her, 
and a fruitful source of discomfort to her Sis- 
ters and Superiors. Instead of directing her 
efforts to bear patiently whatever trials God 
sends her, she wastes her strength in useless 
endeavors to fight with circumstances and to 
control events. Continued disappointment 
makes her morose and ill-tempered, and her 
mental agitation prepares the way for scruples. 
These latter can be cured only by obedience— 
a remedy that is more distasteful than the dis- 
ease to the self-willed Religious. As her anx- 
ieties multiply, she w^ithdraws more and more 
into herself, she isolates herself from her Sis- 
ters and loses confidence in her Superiors, until 
she completes her misery by looking upon it 
as an impossibility to attain the perfection of 
her state. 

While she is in this unhappy condition, she 
forgets all about the fatherly care with which 
God disposes of events ; she endeavors, by 
every means in her power, to refer everything 
to herself, in order to support her own judg- 
ments as far as possible, so that she attaches all 
the importance of an accident or event to the 
secondary causes that God makes use of only 
as instruments to do His will. Consequently 
she must often find herself mistaken, and that 
so glaringly, that she ought, in reason and com- 



Our Own WilL 137 

mon-sense, to acknowledge her error; but in- 
stead of that, if her Superiors or Sisters remon- 
strate with her, she finds a thousand excuses for 
her conduct, which she explains away in a man- 
ner suited, not to truth, but to her own fancies. 
If all other excuses fail, if her Superiors press 
the matter and show how defective her argu- 
ments are and how unsatisfactory her explana- 
tions, she takes refuge in her last resource, and 
says that she cannot help it — that she cannot 
act otherwise. Thus the abuse of her free-will 
leads her to deny its existence, and to give 
utterance to a proposition that contains matter 
enough for heresy, if she only knew and ad- 
verted to the full force of her words. 

If we always referred events to the Almighty 
God and submitted to His dispensations we 
should have little or no cause for uneasiness or 
anxiety, nor should \ve have to puzzle our- 
selves uselessly, seeking for explanations that 
we can never find. Even if many things occur 
for which we cannot assign a particular reason, 
our thoughts, habitually reverting to the First 
Cause, will find therein knowledge and light 
enough to prevent doubts and anxieties, and 
to preserve our peace of soul undisturbed. It 
is only when we give way to that insane desire 
of putting ourselves forward and supporting 
our own opinions that we cause ourselves 



138 Otir Own Will. 

trouble and uneasiness. For then the chief 
thing with us is our own individuaHty : what 
belongs to us in any way assumes an impor- 
tance of vast proportions, so that when we are 
confronted by events and accidents that we 
cannot explain, and our fancied excellence is at 
once upset, we feel indignant and resentfuL 
It is certainly a very disagreeable thing to our 
self-love to be obliged to acknowledge that 
we are not of such importance as we imagine, 
and that there is a Power at work over which 
we have no control, to which we must submit, 
whether we like or not. 

Still the Religious whose self-will has made 
her '^anxious in cares'' may have a certain de- 
sire for perfection ; she may be even very exact 
in outward practices of devotion, and in acts of 
obedience that do not fall foul of her pecuhar 
opinions. What are we to say of her in that 
case ? Does her own will influence even her 
good acts? Generally speaking, yes — at least 
to a certain extent ; for she transfers the care 
she ought to have for her soul to the fulfil- 
ment of her own will, and thus her religious 
practices have a great deal of hypocrisy in 
them : all the time she is engaged in them her 
greatest cause of anxiety is the fear that she 
should find herself obliged to give up her own 
will, or to put up with contradictions or re- 



Our Own WilL 139 

proofs ; the outward show of rehgion that she 
makes is in a great measure an attempt to 
deceive herself, and the different acts of obe- 
dience that she performs have, at the best, 
the negative advantage of keeping her out of 
mischief, if she does not try to find in them 
another support for her own opinions. Be- 
cause her obedience is only partial: so far 
from being a real Religious virtue, it is only 
such as she might practise in the world, if she 
were her own mistress and were free to do just 
as she pleased. In fact, her desire for perfec- 
tion is not worth much either, because she 
looks for an impossible perfection in which she 
herself and her own will must play the princi- 
pal parts: it must be a perfection suited to her 
natural tastes. She will have a great deal to 
do, and a great many cares and anxieties, be- 
fore she finds a perfection of that kind. Our 
sanctification must come from the grace of 
God ; we have no right to dictate to Him any- 
thing regarding it ; we have to co-operate with 
His grace, to desire what is pleasing to Him, 
and to trust confidently in His protection and 
assistance. There we may say that our part 
of the work ceases, and that God must do all 
the rest. 

There are certain ways in which the evil 
effects of this '^ anxiety in cares" show them- 



140 Our Own WilL 

selves in the self-willed Religious. The first is, 
that she suffers from a continual preoccupation 
of mind with useless things. Her thoughts are 
so full of herself and her perplexities, that they 
have no place for anything else ; and, besides, 
they are so unstable, so unsettled, that any 
accident may turn them in another direction, 
provided always that they tend ultimately to 
her own will. Of course she cannot examine 
herself properly, nor indeed do anything that 
requires mental exertion as long as she is thus 
preoccupied. The different duties of the 
Religious Life require to be performed with a 
great deal of care and attention, principally 
because they are the w^ork of God, and because 
our perfection depends on the manner in w^hich 
we perform them, considering our abilities and 
the graces given to us ; the self-willed Religious 
is not able to devote proper care and attention 
to them, as long as she is unwilling to apply 
her mind to anything except the consideration 
of her owm troubles. Hence there can be 
very little prayer or meditation for her. Her 
mind is filled with distracting thoughts, which 
she frequently entertains deliberately; she has 
no confidence that God will hear her if she 
asks to be delivered from them ; and thus her 
vocal prayers are mere matters of routine, 
without heart and without fervor. Nor is it 



Ou7^ Own WilL 141 

any better with her meditations: her mind is 
in a sort of slavery, it is oppressed with a 
sense of uneasiness and discontent, it is dis- 
tracted by doubts, and very often tormented 
by scruples. How could she, under such cir- 
cumstances, attain to the glorious freedom of 
mental prayer, in which the soul is enabled by 
the grace of God to forget for a moment the 
shackles of the body that weigh upon it, and 
to unite itself by a free and untrammelled 
motion w^th God? Not only is her prayer un- 
able to console and comfort her, but also it 
loses its efficacy in great part, so that she has 
to suffer from the constant and wearying dis- 
appointment of knowing that her prayers are 
fruitless. That happens solely because her 
own will has too much to do wath her prayers: 
it comes between her and God, and spoils both 
her intention and her action. If she Welshes 
her prayers to be heard, she must first of all 
submit entirely to the grace of repentance, 
and then everything else will follow in due 
course. 

Another way, in which ** anxiety in cares'* 
shows itself is by a narrowness of spirit which 
measures out everything that is done for 
God with a miserly niggardliness. The fear of 
getting into difficulties with herself, or of in- 
creasing those under w^iich she is actually 



142 Oin- Own Will. 

laboring, prevents the self-willed Religious 
from sen'ing God v/ith a large-hearted and 
generous spirit. Xo matter how eager her 
desires may be for the supernatural blessings 
that she wishes for herself, they are very faint 
and weak where God or His honor and glory 
are concerned ; she cannot^ therefore, be gen- 
erous with God, nor has she, consequently, 
any reason to expect that He will be generous 
with her. For she closes her heart to Him, 
and He v/ill never force an entrance into it. 
His wish is that v.e should invite Him, and 
prepare to receive Him as cordially as we can : 
if we do so He is oniv too willincr to take uo 
His abode \\4th us, and to shower down upon u ; 
lavishly the greatest treasures of His love. But 
the poor Religious, who is a trouble to herself, 
and who finds a fertile source of uneasiness in 
her own Avill, to which she obstinately adheres, 
is blind to the liberality of God, and deaf to 
His gentle invitations; or rather, she expects 
Him to be liberal with her in an impossible 
way, and she accepts His invitations in such a 
half-hearted manner, that she shows more fear 
than love, more anxiet}' than confidence. 

A Religious in this state is very much to be 
pitied. The splendid opportunities that the 
Religious Life offers her of gaining merit in 
the sight of God by glorious victories over His 



Our Own Will. 143 

enemies are mostly thrown away, and her 
energies are wasted on petty, miserable fancies, 
her spiritual strength is exhausted by fighting 
useless battles with mere chimeras, and her 
courage oozes out and melts away at the bare 
apprehension of imaginary dangers. Nor will 
she be convinced of her folly in attempting to 
prescribe a manner of action to Divine Provi- 
dence. She often asks herself, Why did God 
do this, why has He placed me in such a posi- 
tion, subjected me to so many trials, over- 
whelmed me with so many cares ; and all the 
while the cares and trials come from herself, 
that is to say, they find their power of disturb- 
ing her peace of mind only in her own will. 
It is a painful thing to think that one who is 
so highly gifted by God as to have the grace 
of Vocation to the Religious Life should sink 
so low as to remonstrate with the Almighty, 
because He does what He pleases. Who are 
we that should dare to put our puny desires 
against the eternal decrees of the Great King 
of heaven and earth ? What right have we 
to complain of His actions with regard to us ? 
Can anything come from the Most Holy but 
what is good and profitable and useful for us? 
Surely we are honored by any and every thing 
that God does for us. The very chastisements 
that He inflicts upon us to recall us to His 



144 ^^^ Own Will. 

love are far more valuable than the greatest 
rewards ever bestowed by earthly sovereigns. 

Finally, an effect of useless ^^ anxiety in 
cares" is to weaken our mental powers with 
regard to spiritual things, so that we are in- 
capable of appreciating them at their proper 
value. This is the great fault of the world, 
and consequently, one diametrically opposed 
to every principle of the Religious Life. The 
world is taken up with what it can hear and 
see, it values what it can lay its hands on, it 
desires everything that ministers to the com- 
fort or well-being of the senses, or to the 
cravings of self-love and self-esteem. Thus 
spiritual things do not come within its domain ; 
it attaches no value to them, because it does 
not see in them any power of supplying its 
wants or of gratifying its favorite inclinations. 
The world, therefore, does not think or speak 
of such things, nor allow them in any w^ay to 
influence it, because all its powers are em- 
ployed on objects that can be perceived by the 
senses. This great mistake is the cause of an 
unspeakable amount of misery, unhappiness, 
and falsehood ; for spiritual things depend for 
their value, not on the appreciation of crea- 
tures, but on the perfections of God Himself ; 
so that every neglect of them is an insult to 
the Divine Majesty, and brings down the 



Oitr Own VVilL 145 

anger of God on the perverse and sinful world 
that despises His choicest benefits. 

And there is no doubt that the world would 
suffer far more severely than it does were it 
not for the prayers and good works of so many 
holy men and women who serve God in the 
Religious Life, and to whom spiritual things 
are the only ones that possess any value. 
They see very clearly that this life is worth 
nothing, except in so far as we use it to gain 
eternal life ; they look upon earthly things as 
dust and ashes, while they would give every- 
thing they have of this world for even the 
least supernatural favor that God can bestow 
on them. Thus, if it were in their power, 
they would give away the greatest treasures of 
earth for one act of the pure love of God, and 
they would willingly renounce the greatest 
honors for the sake of one act of sincere and 
genuine humility. Because when they re-^ 
ceived the grace of Vocation God enlightened 
their minds, and showed them the real stand- 
ard by which to judge of the value of things, 
and when they act on this grace He keeps 
their minds from error, so that they see the 
truth without difficulty and embrace it with 
joy. And what a wonderful thing that grace 
is ! What a change it makes, almost instan- 
taneously, in the fortunate recipient ! How 



146 Our Own Will. 

different worldly things appear to us when we 
learn to despise them ! how different heavenly 
things when we know their real value ! Praise 
be to God that there are so many in the Holy 
Catholic Church who have received this great 
grace, who live according to it, and who thus 
give great glory to God ! 

But this supernatural light, this excellent 
grace, does not work in us along with our own 
will. It requires the co-operation of a will that 
is submissive to God, and that desires, with all 
its might, to please Him; it cannot tolerate 
one that is self-seeking and conceited in its de- 
sires. So that we can easily see what becomes 
of the grace of Vocation in the self-willed 
Religious. She puts it out of sight as far as 
possible, she thrusts it away into some obscure 
corner of her heart, where it may not annoy 
or trouble her by remorse, in her efforts to 
please herself and to satisfy her own inclina- 
tions. Thus she begins already to undervalue 
spiritual things, and to prefer temporal things 
to them ; she places herself on a level with the 
world, by adopting its false standards and act- 
ing on its lying maxims. The natural conse- 
quence of following our own will is to weaken 
our spiritual powers, by withdrawing tliem 
from the influence of divine grace and plac- 
ing: them at the service of the devil and the 



Ottr Own WilL 147 

world. Our fear and love are then excited by 
the leading influence, and as this latter tries to 
keep us far away from God, we do not look to 
Him when we are judging between the spir- 
itual and the temporal, but to ourselves. 
Therefore we often deliberately sacrifice su- 
pernatural graces to secure some wretched 
thing that we have set our heart on, or to 
carry out some absurd idea that we have 
adopted. A Religious who gets into this state 
must be miserable indeed. She falls from a 
great height when she takes the world as her 
guide instead of God. Many and grievous 
must be the anxieties that harass her when 
she abandons the only source of consolation 
and strength. She must see, too, that by un- 
dervaluing spiritual things she is guilty of great 
injustice to God, who gives her spiritual gifts 
because they were purchased for her by the 
blood of His Only Son ; to the convent, be- 
cause it has a right to expect help froni her in 
the great work of furthering the glory of God 
and the salvation of souls ; and to the Church 
at large, because it naturally expects all Re- 
ligious to wage war on the world without truce 
or intermission, after the example of its Divine 
Founder. The commission of an unjust act 
does not help us tq perfection ; quite the con- 
trary : so that the self-willed Religious must 



148 Otcr Own WilL 

often fall into grievous mistakes and commit 
many deliberate venial sins of which she has, 
perhaps, no idea of repenting; at least, her re- 
pentance, while under the influence of her own 
will, must be very imperfect and insincere. 
No wonder, then, that she is ready to give up 
spiritual things to secure the object of her de- 
sires or to obtain a temporary relief from her 
anxieties. Let us see, now, how she goes to 
work. She has determined, vre suppose, not 
to obey in a certain point, commanded by the 
Rule or Constitutions, or by her Superiors. 
She knows that this determination is wrong 
and displeasing to God, and that whenever or 
wherever she attempts to carry it out, she has 
Him against her; nor does this knowledge 
leave her, even when she is performing other 
actions which, in themselves, are good and 
praiseworthy. Now it is not a very comfort- 
ing thing for a Religious to think that God is 
looking on her with displeasure, least of all 
when she is resolved not to give up what dis- 
pleases Him, and so the poor victim of her 
own will grows anxious in everything she does ; 
scruples begin to torment her very soon, and 
she gets into such a state that she would do 
anything to escape the trouble she has brought 
on herself — anything except giving up her own 
w^ill ; if she did that, her trouble would cease at 



I 



Our Own Will. 149 



ohee. Hence she tries to persuade herself that 
the obedience placed upon her is the cause of 
her anxiety, and she immediately begins to 
scheme and plan, in every possible way, how 
to get rid of that obedience. Thus she sacri- 
fices spiritual things for temporal; because a 
moment's reflection ought to convince her 
that she can gain immense merit in the sight 
of God by doing what is disagreeable to her- 
self for His sake. 

But the evil goes farther still, and vitiates, 
although it may not positively destroy, her 
whole spiritual life. A necessary means of 
tending to perfection is to have a great spirit 
of repentance for all the sins and imperfections 
of our whole lives, so that this repentance 
does not consist so much in a series of transi- 
tory acts, but rather in a habitual tendency of 
the will to be sorry for having ever offended 
God. When the will is already taken up with 
something that has no reference to God, it has no 
room for a repentance of this sort; and there- 
fore the self-willed Religious, involved in count- 
less troubles of her own making, cannot have 
the proper habitual sorrow for sin that belongs 
to lier holy state. Nay, even the occasional 
repentance she elicits is faulty and imperfect, 
because there is a great deal of hesitation about 
it: it has very little hope connected witli it and 



150 07tr Ow?i Will. 

too much bitterness ; its sorrow is in a great 
measure selfish, and it is wanting in that thor- 
oughgoing confidence in God which inspires 
fresh courage and renewed determination to 
avoid offending Him for the future. Thus her 
resolution is hampered, for she does not value 
spiritual things enough to sacrifice her own will 
to secure them. 

All these troubles are certainly serious 
enough in themselves, and can occasion much 
uneasiness and disquiet. Yet they are insig- 
nificant enough in their cause, generally speak- 
ing; for, as a rule, they arise from some ab- 
surd idea, some crotchet, that the self-willed 
Religious gets into her head, and keeps there, 
in spite of obedience. Otherwise she could 
find very little in a convent to annoy or tor- 
ment her, beyond the daily crosses that every 
one must bear who desires to conquer nature 
and follow the law of grace. Even if there are 
great trials sometimes, they are always of such 
a kind that obedience can render them not 
only easy to bear, but even sweet to the spiri- 
tual palate, for they come from God, and are 
to us a precious means of laying up treasure in 
heaven. When we are once thoroughly im- 
pressed with the necessity of mortifying our 
own will, we need not be afraid of any troubles 
or anxieties that may come upon us. 



i 



OiLr Oivn Will. 151 



There is one very efficacious cure, and we 
may say it is the only one for this '' anxiety in 
cares" and its attendant evils. That cure is 
abandonment to the divine will. Once our 
will has taken the right direction, we cannot 
push it too far in that direction; that is to say, 
there should be no bounds to our wishes and 
desires, since there are none to the divine lib- 
erality from which we expect the fulfilment 
of these desires. Hence when we wish for 
anything that we know to be pleasing to God, 
we should wish for it with all our power, ac- 
cording to the decrees of Providence. Now if 
we have been '^ anxious in cares'* through self- 
will, and we desire to repent and live more in 
accordance with our holy Vocation, we must 
get rid of the foolish cares that have disturbed 
us. But who can take them from us ? God, 
and He alone. Who can prevent these cares 
from coming upon us again ? God, and He 
alone. What other desire, then, can we form 
but that He should show us His mercy, forgive 
our sins, and since we cannot trust in ourselves 
for a single day, that He should take upon 
Himself the whole charge of our lives for the 
future, so as to save us from ourselves? Thus 
by an act of the will we can abandon ourselves 
to God and secure His powerful protection in 
every act we do. We free ourselves from all 



152 Oiij' Oiu7i IViil. 

personal troubles and cares, by confiding them 
beforehand to the Divine Providence, so that 
we have nothing to trouble ourselves about but 
doing the will of God as perfectly as we can. 
Thus abandonnaent to the divine will, instead 
of superinducing quietisnn, or spiritual laziness, 
or sentimental piety, is the ver}^ thing that will 
make us really active in the divine service and 
really devoted to the honor and glory of God. 
For it is not what we do ourselves, but what 
we do not prevent God from doing in us, that 
will bring us to perfection. When we give 
ourselves completely to Him, He will know 
how to use us to ;he best advantage. 

We may attain to the practice of abandon- 
ment to the divine will by fervent desires. 
Since such desires come from grace, God will 
not fail to fulfil them for us, according to His 
own wise decrees, and in the time, phce, and 
manner that are most pleasing to Him. Let 
us only form the desire, and He will not allov»' 
it to be fruitless ; that is the only thing wc 
need care about : if v/e get anxious about the 
circumstances of time, place, or manner, under 
which God will give us this thorough abandon- 
ment to Himself, then we contradict ourselves, 
and our desire is not quite a pure one, there is 
too much of self in it. We can also use difTer- 
cnt accidents in our lives as means.of prepa- 



Otii' Ozvn IVilL 153 

ration for the perfect practice of abandonment 
to the divine will. For instance, we often 
labor, under some depression of spirits, imagin- 
ing that something disagreeable is about to 
happen, or that some trial is in store for us. 
That is a fine opportunity for us to show that 
we have really no care for anything but the ac- 
complishment of the will of God. We must 
conquer the depression as far as possible, and 
then fully convince ourselves that if the w^orst 
thing we dread were really to happen, we 
should have grace and strength to support it, 
no matter what our present weakness may be, 
and that, if trials of the severest nature should 
fall to our lot, God will enable us at the proper 
moment to bear them with profit to our souls. 
In this way we can train ourselves to look at 
suffering, whether mental or physical, in a 
Christian spirit, so that no suffering need ever 
make us unhappy. Although nature is afflicted 
and cries out against the burden, the will, 
strengthened by grace, rises superior to nature 
and asserts the just sovereignty of God over 
our whole being ; the supernatural life that is 
in us rules over and controls every motion of 
the animal life, and thus through the mercy of 
God, the words of St. Paul may in time be 
verified in us : ^^ I live, no, not I, but Christ 
liveth in me.*' Let us once give ourselves to 



154 Our Oiv7i WilL 

God, and submit humbly to His representa- 
tives, our Superiors, and we need never fear 
that our own will will make us *^ anxious in 
cares/' 



I 



Our Own Will. 155 



CHAPTER XIL 

OUR OWN WILL IS EASILY DISQUIETED BY 
SUSPICIONS. 

There is a peculiar feature in the relations 
of human beings to each other, which proves 
the destructive power of sin and its deadly 
hostility to happiness : that feature is the ten- 
dency that men have to judge each other 
harshly, where private interest is in any way 
concerned. We have already alluded to an in- 
clination that we naturally have, of asserting 
ourselves, making much of what we are and 
what we possess, and measuring everything by 
the standard of our own individuality. This 
inclination expresses itself by the harsh judg- 
ments that we pass upon our neighbor's con- 
duct, either outwardly or merely in thought. 
Thus the original design and strict command 
of Almighty God are constantly interfered with 
and violated, while human happiness receives a 
deadly blow from the very circumstance that 
was intended to promote and intensify it. We 
are created to live together in this world and 



156 Ottr Own Will. 

in the next ; we have special faculties given us 
to maintain the social relations; and as far as 
the supernatural life is concerned in its means 
and in its end, we can reach the perfection of 
our being only as members of the Mystic Body 
of Christ, the Holy Catholic Church ; that is, 
we must belong to that society, instituted by 
Our Divine Lord, which has the Pope as the 
visible bond of unity between its members 
here on earth. If we receive any natural bless- 
ing, it is given to us as children of the great 
human family; if a supernatural grace is be- 
stowed on us, we receive it and profit by it as 
Catholics ; nor is there any visible bond of 
union between us and God which exempts us 
from the obligations of the great Christian and 
social contracts imposed upon us by Him. Of 
course we can approach to God by prayer 
without considering any one but God and our- 
selves, but such prayer is not intended to make 
us forget our brethren ; on the contrary, it 
rather draws tighter the bend of union between 
all who love each other supernaturally and for 
God's sake, and it constantly reproduces in the 
Catholic Church those magnificent examples of 
self-devotion that excite the astonishment of 
the world and puzzle its limited understanding. 
The seven Sacraments explain to us the nature 
and the necessity of Christian love and charity: 



Our Own Will, 157 

they prove that we cannot afford to look upon 
ourselves as isolated units of humanity, or to 
separate our happiness and well-being from 
that of the Church at large. The life of the 
Catholic Church is the perfection of all the 
social relations which it preserves from the cor- 
ruption and taint of sin, and raises to a great 
extent above the reach of the evil conseqences 
of sin : that is to say, when we live according 
to the true Catholic spirit, we are in peace with 
our neighbor, outwardly and inwardly; but 
whenever we refuse to submit to the Church, 
when v/e are carried away by the idea of acting 
according to our own inclinations, then nature, 
corrupted by sin, holds sway m us, our rela- 
tions v/ith our fellow-Christians become dis- 
turbed, and we give way to all the suspicions 
and rash judgments that an overweening sense 
of self-importance can inspire* 

Now we have no special faculties or powers 
that could help us to find out the real motives 
of the actions of others, so that we might com- 
pare them with some acknowledged and un- 
changeable standard of truth, and pronounce 
confidently upon them; that is, as a general 
rule, because God may place some under 
special obligations, which bind them to observe 
the conduct of others, to form a certain judg- 
ment of it, and to act upon that judgment. In 



158 Our Own Will. 

such a case God always gives special helps and 
graces of state ; this He does Avith all Superiors. 
Otherwise, since we must confess our natural 
inability to judge others, according to the 
proper standard, when our nature cuts itself 
adrift from the influence of grace, it is obliged 
to invent a standard of its own on which to 
found its judgments. This is always some 
favorite idea, some opinion which springs from 
or helps to support a great idea of self, and its 
great source of strength is our own will. Hence 
self-wiil and a strong inclination to suspicions 
and unjust judgments must always go together, 
for they are a mutual help to each other. We 
see, then, how our own will can be '' easily dis- 
quieted by suspicions," and what a source of 
unhappiness it is to those who refuse to live 
according to the spirit of the Church. 

Where the life of the Church is most vigor- 
ous, there we see its characteristics best dis- 
played and its powder of doing good most 
clearly exemplified. But the Religious Life is 
a state of perfection ; it is the intensification of 
every work that the Church does on earth, it 
is the source whence she derives her most 
valiant warriors, and therefore the Religious 
Life is the most vivid expression of the super- 
natural energy of the Church. Consequently, 
whatever faculties we had, as good Christians 



Our Own WilL 159 

in the world, for fulfilling the obligations of 
charity towards one another become increased 
and strengthened by the grace of Vocation, 
which calls upon us to practise a charity far 
beyond what we could practise in the world. 
If God, in His wonderful goodness and mercy, 
has placed us amongst the chosen and favorite 
members of His Mystic Body, He will certainly 
give us the means of supporting our dignity 
properly; He will supply what is wanting and 
cut off what is excessive in our natural quali- 
ties, or at least He will place those qualities 
under the control of reason, by His grace, that 
we may bear our dignity with honor to Him 
and profit to ourselves. This is a priceless 
blessing, even in this life ; for it develops our 
social qualities and guides them in the right 
direction. If we ask, then, how is it that, as a 
general rule, Religious who have given up the 
world and their own nature so completely that 
they seem to have renounced all natural hap- 
piness and not to concern themselves in any 
way about it — how is it that they, after all, are 
the happiest people to be seen everywhere? 
Must we conclude that the more you fly from 
happiness, the more surely you attain it? In 
one sense, indeed, this paradox is true, because 
the Religious who seeks only supernatural 
things, lives much happier and more contented 



i6o Our Own VVilL 

than the vvorldhng who seeks to satisfy every 
inclination of his nature. It is beyond a doubt 
that our greatest well-being is secured by our 
allowing to reason, assisted and enlightened 
by grace, the control over all our actions, and 
when the will, the motive-power of our facul- 
ties, is itself moved and inspired by the Al- 
mighty, the actions proceeding from it do not 
suffer from the evil consequences of sin and 
must tend to our happiness, if not immediately, 
at least so certainly that the short interval be- 
comes quite supportable to us, buoyed up as 
we are with a lively hope, founded on the 
divine goodness, and looking forward to the 
divine Omnipotence for its realization. Thus 
the Religious w^ho is true to her Vocation 
knows how to keep in check any unruly in- 
clinations that would dispose her to give way 
to suspicions or harsh judgments of her Sisters 
or Superiors, and she is freed in that way from 
a great deal that makes the world unhappy 
and miserable. Further, her relations with her 
Sisters become supernaturalized ; she has for 
them, not so much a natural love, based upon 
their personal qualities or character, as a 
heavenly charity, firmly established upon the 
love of God, and supported and fed by the 
flames of that fire which Christ came on earth 
to kindle. In other words, the social relations 



Our Ozvn WilL i6i 

which the Ahiiighty wishes His rational crea- 
tures to have with each other, and the benefi- 
cent results which follow from them, are to be 
seen in their highest degree of earthly perfec- 
tion in a convent. 

But the graces of the Religious Life, power- 
ful as they are, do not take away our free-will ; 
we can accept or reject them, just as we 
choose. If we take the latter course, we place 
ourselves outside the influence of the grace of 
Vocation — at least as to its direct work upon 
our souls, and of course we must expect to 
find ourselves judging by false standards, and 
disturbing the relations of supernatural charity 
that should unite us with our Sisters and Supe- 
riors. In that way a Religious may become 
"easily disquieted by suspicions/' and may 
commit many faults that are very prejudicial to 
her perfection. In fact, a Religious who gives 
way to suspicions, despises great graces, and 
acts unworthily of the high dignity conferred 
on her, so that there is a special deformity in 
her action which is not found in similar faults 
of lay-people. She makes an exception of 
herself amongst her Sisters, and therefore the 
evil effects of her suspicions are brought out 
more prominently. Consequently, it is not a 
difficult matter to analyze the conduct of a Re- 
lio^ious who allows herself to ofet into this state. 



1 62 Otir Oiun WilL 

The whole evil has its root in self-will, and 
it would be a great mistake to seek for it in 
personal qualities, or in individual excesses or 
defects. It is quite possible for a Religious 
who is naturally of a suspicious disposition to 
work so well with grace, that she rarely, if 
ever, entertains an unjust or harsh opinion of 
her Sisters; while, on the other hand, one who 
is of an easy-going character, and slow to take 
offence, may become so attached to some idea 
of her own that she looks upon all who in 
any way interfere with it as being actuated by 
some unworthy motive. The very essence of 
our own will is selfishness : it never takes into 
account the duties of Christian charity, nor 
does it try to maintain the social relations in 
their integrity by not violating their super- 
natural character. Its end and motive is self, 
it selects its means v/ithout any reference to 
the divine will, and it is quite satisfied to ob- 
tain what it seeks without any glory accruing 
therefrom to God, or any advantage to souls. 
It forms its plans for itself alone, utterly dis- 
regarding the obligations and duties that it 
finds in its way ; while it grows indignant at 
every act of others which tends to remind it of 
its duties or to enforce its obligations. Then 
it pronounces harsh judgments and gives way 
to suspicions, which have no foundation ex- 



Our Own IVilL 163 

cept in selfishness, for our own will discards 
the true standard of right and wrong, and 
establishes a moral code suited to its own 
pecuhar views and desires. Hence, if our pet 
idea is opposed, we experience a disagreeable 
sensation, sonnething similar to the act of 
reason by which we renounce sin ; that is, we 
abhor sin so much when acting under the in- 
fluence of divine grace, that we are ready to 
do and suffer anything rather than commit it, 
and when our own will sways us, u^e abhor 
everything that opposes it, to such an extent, 
that we look upon such things as evil and 
reprehensible. Besides, when we once give 
way to suspicions, since they are all intended 
as a support to our own will, we are very often 
obliged to extend them to acts of others that 
do not in any way concern us ; for although 
our conduct is inconsistent in the highest 
degree, yet we try to give it some color of 
consistency by finding fault with everything 
that is done by those who are the objects of 
suspicion to us. Aversions and unreasonable 
dislikes frequently arise from this cause, to 
the great detriment of the practice of sisterly 
charity. 

There are many occasions when we are so 
convinced of our pwn utter helplessness, that 
we have to seek aid and consolation from 



164 Our Own Will, 

others ; this may happen by a special decree 
of Divine Providence, who wishes to teach us 
that we cannot trust in ourselves, and that we 
must often be content with the support and 
consolation that He gives us by means of 
mortals like ourselves. Such trials are evi- 
dently very useful, and since they greatly en- 
hance the merit of obedience, we have good 
reason for believing that they are of frequent 
occurrence in a convent. Besides that, the 
bond that unites the mem.bers of the same 
religious community is not a mere sentimental 
affection, but a real and substantial outcome 
of divine charity, so that as Religious are 
more closely connected than by mere, ties 
of flesh and blood, they must have a deeper 
sense of their dependence on each other, and 
learn to see in each other a help and a certain 
means of arriving, with God's grace, at the 
perfection of their state. Every phase of the 
supernatural life that tends to develop and 
perfect this mutual esteem and charity, must 
therefore be looked for in a convent. But 
what is the Religious to do who is '^easily 
disquieted by suspicions," when such expe- 
riences fall to her lot? She sees herself in 
need of the good w^orks of others, she wants 
advice or consolation from them, she is utterly 
unable to explain matters to her own satisfac- 



Our Own WilL 165 

tion, and she requires the help of her Sisters to 
understand things rightly, or she gets annoyed 
by some scruple which only her Confessor or 
her Superioress can explain away properly. 
Her obvious course, in such circumstances, 
would be to surrender herself and her private 
views entirely to the direction of those whom 
she thinks God has chosen to help her, and 
her confidence in them would redound to the 
glory of God and to her own great advantage. 
But the suspicious Religious does not see things 
in that light. She has no confidence in any one 
but herself, and when she is forced to abandon 
that and to seek help from others, she has more 
confidence in her own suspicions regarding the 
motives of those w^iom she asks to help her, 
than she has in the help or advice they give her. 
She is thus a perpetual torment to herself, for 
she is constantly on the look-out for impossibili- 
ties, or imagining that she has a right to com- 
plain if impossibilities do not occur. To satisfy 
such a Religious and put a stop to her sus- 
picions, a convent should be filled, not with 
weak, sinful mortals who are trying to attain 
perfection, but with angels or saints who have 
already attained it. She forgets that faults 
and imperfections are so incidental to every 
state of humanity in this life, that they are 
often unavoidable, and consequently without 



1 66 Otir Own Will. 

sin; that if we 3;e a fault in our Sisters or 
Superiors, whom we ask for advice or help, we 
hav^e no reason therefore to scorn their advice 
or to suspect them of selfish motives in help- 
ing us. On the contrary, Christian charity 
and prudence tell us, when we see or think we 
see faults in others, to suspect ourselves, to 
scorn our own opinion, and to give ourselves 
up with full confidence to those whom God 
has chosen as the ministers of His grace to 
our souls. 

The Community Life, which is such a bless- 
ing and help to those who give up their own 
will in the spirit of their holy Vocation, only 
aggravates the trouble and unhappiness of the 
suspicious Religious. She is in daily contact 
with her Sisters and Superiors, she has every 
opportunity of observing their actions and 
studying their lives, and she uses the opportu- 
nity, too, in a way of her own ; she carefully 
examines every little fault she finds in her 
Sisters, she nurses it in her mind and cherishes 
the recollection of it, until at last, long after 
the fault has been forgiven by God and for- 
gotten by her Superiors, she succeeds in mag- 
nifying it into something enormous, upon 
which she commences to lay the foundations 
of a lasting aversion and dislike. An aversion 
thus commenced is sure to ripen into hatred. 



Our Own WilL 167 

unless it is speedily checked by a total subju- 
gation of self-will, which alone can rennove 
finally all cause of unjust and uncharitable 
suspicions. 

Therefore, the Religious who is '' easily dis- 
quieted by su>picions," and who, having found 
out her misery, is tired of it and wishes to be 
freed from it, must honesth* and candidly con- 
fess her fault in the sight of God, and, with all 
humility, beg of Him to restore to her her peace 
of mind and to deliver her from the unhappi- 
ness she has caused herself. She niust not 
give way to the foolish pride of wishing to 
continue in her misery, lest her Sisters should 
notice that she is repentant, for, b\- doing so, 
she would reject the grace that God gave her 
in opening her eyes to her wretched state, and 
she would prove to her Sisters that a miserable 
vanity has more power over her than the grace 
of Vocation. The humble confession of our 
faults before God is the first step to obtain for- 
giveness, and it is such an eflficacious one, that 
the Religious who has made it, no matter how 
much she may have been disquieted by sus- 
picions, ma\\ with all confidence in the mercy 
of God, prepare to use the means best adapted 
to bring her life more into conformity with her 
holy state. 

The first of these means is to conceive an 



i68 Our Ow7i Will. 

earnest, heartfelt desire of salvation and perfec- 
tion. If we have tried the force of our will on 
selfish and miserable things, and found that it 
has power enough to make us unhappy and 
untrue to our Vocation, surely we have rea- 
son to hope that, when we use it in conformity 
with the divine will and with the help of 
divine grace, we shall be able to do more for 
our happiness and contentment than we for- 
merly did to make ourselves miserable ; for 
God is far more powerful for good than we are 
for evil, and not even the greatest of our sins 
is able to stand up against the least of His 
graces, once we freely accept that grace and 
correspond with it. And have we not a thou- 
sand reasons for desiring to save our souls 
with a most intense and constant desire? 
They are so plain and so convincing, that it is 
unnecessary to insist upori them, least of all to 
a Spouse of Christ, who, though she has al- 
lowed herself to be blinded by her own will, 
yet has never, as we suppose, lost the wish to 
be happy with her Heavenly Bridegroom for 
; all eternity. Still she must confess that while 
she was*' disquieting herself by suspicions," her 
desire of salvation was not near so intense nor so 
constant as it sliould have been. She must ac- 
knowledge that she voluntarily admitted many 
things that could have placed her salvation 



07ir Ow7i Will. 169 

in great danger, if God were not so merciful. 
She has now to remedy all this by wishing for 
nothing so much as for the grace of holy per- 
severance and a happy death. But her desires 
in that direction must go beyond her natural 
strength, and therefore she must beg of God 
by earnest prayer to strengthen and increase 
them, so that no mere natural wishes of hers 
may ever be able to weaken or interfere with 
them. Thus the acts of her will must eventu- 
ally acquire such supernatural vigor, that she 
will really aim at perfection, and will be quite 
pleased to sacrifice anything and everything 
that is opposed to it. Nay more : wlien she 
once gets into this happy state, she will find 
that the recollection of her former miseries, far 
from discouraging her, will only increase her 
earnestness in the divine service ; for she will 
say to herself, ^' It is time for me now to do 
something for God. I have lost opportunities 
enough of giving Him honor and glory, I have, 
defrauded the Church of my services to which 
she has a just title, I have wronged my Sisters 
and placed diflficulties in the way of my Supe- 
riors ; I am heartily sorry for having done so, 
and I know that God, who has given me this 
sorrow will also help me to serve Him in ear- 
nest for the future, so that I may attain per- 
fctction before I die." As the Apostle tells us, 



170 Oitr Own IVilL 



% 



everything helps those who love God ; even in 
past faults we can find a motive for increased 
energy and for a more self-sacrificing love, by 
virtue of an intense desire to atone for them, 
and to make good, as far as we can, the wrong 
we have done to God, whom we love so 
much. 

The second means of avoiding suspicions is 
to examine, calmly and dispassionately, the 
cause of them. We shall find this, almost in- 
variably, to be some passion or unworthy in- 
clination, or some frivolous desire that tries to 
enslave our will. Having found the cause, it 
is easy for us to overcome it, not merely once 
or twice, but a hundred times, if necessary; 
for we know not but that it may be the wall of 
God to leave that cause in us for a long time, 
even to the end of our lives, that we may have 
the opportunity of combating it, and so of 
gaining glory for Him and profit for ourselves. 
We have seen already, in this chapter, that 
the real root of suspicions is our own will : the 
passions and evil inclinations are merely the 
outward causes, as it w^ere, which try to deter- 
mine the will to act on its own account and to 
overlook the claims that God has on it. Now, 
since our will is always in our power, as far as 
deliberate acts are concerned, it is evident that 
presupposing the grace of God, which is never 



Our Own WilL 171 

wanting, we can overcome every temptation 
to be suspicious, no matter how strong it may 
be. For instance, it can happen that I am in- 
chned to suspect a Sister of speaking of my 
faults; the thought comes into my mind, and 
with it the idea that the Sister is uncharitable. 
If I am satisfied to take a!l this for granted, I 
shall easily give way to the suspicion ; but if 
I am determined to find out the cause of it, 
before giving way, I shall examine myself, and 
with a little trouble find self-iove or self-esteem 
hard at work within me, trying to bend my will 
and to steal it away from God. Profiting by 
this discovery, I cannot be deceived by the 
hypocritical suggestions of self-esteem, for I 
know that my suspicions are founded, not on 
the fear that my Sister may be guilty of un- 
charity, but on the dread and dislike that I 
have to be thought little of. When I know 
where the disease is seated, the remedy is 
easily applied, and each successive victory 
that I gain over myself gives me a habit 
of conquering and a greater confidence in 
God. 

Thus through the divine mercy I can use 
the very faults in my character, the very weak 
points in my nature, as means of displaying 
the perfections and infinite power of God, and 
at any moment, no matter what I have been 



172 Our Own WilL 

in the past, I can begin to serve God with re- 
newed vigor and fresh energy, until I shall be 
able to say, with St. Paul, " I live, no not I, 
but Christ liveth in me/* 



Oiir Own Will. 173 



CHAPTER XIIL 

OUR OWN WILL IS MORE DESIROUS OF GLORY 
THAN OF VIRTUE, AND LOVES REPUTATION 

MORE THAN A GOOD CONSCIENCE, 

Although the human will is a natural fac- 
ulty and necessary to the completion of ouf 
nature, yet it has a peculiarly vigorous way of 
acting, it possesses a certain energy of its own, 
that it can find nothing to correspond with 
exactly in any mere created thing that it de- 
sires. No matter how fully we may possess or 
enjoy any creature, there is still such an im- 
mense power of desiring left behind in the will 
that nothing short of infinity can completely 
satisfy it; therefore, the enjoyment that mere 
creatures can give us is short-lived, and the 
satisfaction that we derive from them is soon 
swallowed up by the vast amount of energy 
that is stored away in the will. Hence the 
very nature of the human will enforces the 
great truth, revealed to us by God, that we 
are not made for ourselves nor for other crea- 
tures, but for Him alone. 



174 Otcr Own Will. 

Now it is manifest that we, of ourselves, 
have no power of controlHng and guiding, in 
the proper direction, a faculty that nothing 
created can satisfy. Of course we have our will 
in our own power ; we can vary its acts, and 
turn them hither and thither just as we please; 
but we cannot supply material enough for it 
to work upon : no amount of created things 
can occupy its energy to the full extent, and 
our natural power does not go beyond what 
this world gives us. It is impossible for us, 
then, to employ the will properly and to the 
full extent of its energy, without the help of 
divine grace. That alone can direct our de- 
sires to a fitting object, and supply them with 
material which can neither fail nor disappoint 
them. Hence we have many noble aspira- 
tions, many supernatural impulses, which come 
to us from the Almighty, and elevate our de- 
sires far above creatures to fix them on the 
Creator. Nor is it astonishing that such noble 
aspirations should exist in us simultaneously 
with the countless miseries to which our nature 
is exposed, for the will, in which they are 
seated, has its own peculiar fashion of acting, 
and can hold itself aloof from all interference 
on the part of the lower faculties of our na- 
ture, with which the miseries of life come into 
immediate contact. Thus I may suffer intense 



Our Own VVilL 175 

bodily pain, and be outwardly the most miser- 
able of mortals, while if I am at the same 
time fully resigned to the will of God, I per- 
form in my own degree the highest act of 
which human nature is capable, and I am im- 
pelled to it by the noblest aspiration that can 
animate the human heart; that act is the love 
of God above all things, the aspiration is the 
desire to prove that love by suffering for God's 
sake. In the same way spiritual trials and 
temptations, as well as the countless doubts 
and perplexities that at times assail us, have 
no power to degrade the will or to deprive it 
of the noble aspirations implanted in it by 
God, as long as we subject ourselves to the in- 
fluence of grace. 

Thus, while He leaves our human nature 
intact, God, in His mercy and goodness, sur- 
rounds us with so many helps and fills us with 
so many supernatural and heavenly desires, 
that we need never be at a loss for a worthy 
object, on which to employ all the force and 
energy of our will, without any fear of disap- 
pointment or dissatisfaction. Nay, even the 
very evils of life are a powerful help to this 
ennobling of our nature. The tendency of 
evil is to degrade and lower, but where it is 
opposed by good, it is powerless to work mis- 
chief, or rather it becomes a means of intensi- 



176 Otir Own WilL 

fying the good. We see this every day of our 
hves in the temptations that we overcome by 
the grace of God. Not only are those tempta* 
tions unable to harm us, but the very fact of 
our resisting them, with the help of grace, 
proves that no evil is able to withstand the 
goodness of God, and that He can draw 
from the evil a good far greater than the harm 
originally intended ; for we know that there 
is nothing that strengthens our virtue Hke fre- 
quent trials and temptations. 

But, it is mainly by the will, assisted by 
grace, that we have to overcome the evils of 
life ; nor can we do it in any way but in that 
marked out for us by our Divine Lord. He 
gained a glorious triumph over evil, not by 
flying from it, but by submitting to it, as 
far as He could with patience and love. In 
spite of the struggle of human nature in Him, 
in the garden of Gethsemane, His human will 
refused not a single pang, not a single torment, 
mental or bodily, of His bitter passion ; and 
therefore His victory over suffering and death 
was a complete and perfect one, inasmuch as, 
by a perfect act of the will, He gave Himself 
altogether to His Eternal Father. The Relig- 
ious wdio has the spirit of her Vocation must 
imitate the example of her Heavenly Spouse. 
She should be incapable of desiring, at least 



02tr Own WilL 177 

deliberately, anything but what is pleasing to 
God, or makes her pleasing to Him. So that 
her life must be formed and characterized by 
the virtues of her holy state, her desires must 
tend to the acquisition of those virtues, nor 
must she admit any wish that might drag her 
down to earth, or interfere with the heavenly 
desires of her will strengthened by grace. 
Least of all should she seek for any temporal 
reward or earthly consolation for her good 
actions. God certainly gives such rewards very 
often, but then they are more heavenly than 
earthly, and they are able to produce an 
eternal effect, inasmuch as they are intended 
to help to sanctify our souls. The really spirit- 
ual Religious fixes her treasure in Heaven ; she 
desires God, and is not satisfied with anything 
less. She loves Him for His own sake, and 
not for his consolations; and therefore, since 
her will is an obedient servant of her Lord and 
Master, it is always prepared to follow the 
guidance of divine grace, so that it knows how 
to receive consolations and how to do without 
them. 

On the other hand, the Religious who is fond 
of her own will often seeks earthly things and 
deliberately makes them the end of her actions. 
Owing to her want of mortification, the love of 
God and the desire to possess Him do not 



178 Our Own Will. 

occupy her completely, so that she has room 
for many more loves and desires, which she 
admits into her will just as it suits her fancies 
and natural inclinations. I do not mean to say 
that a mortified Religious, and one who hates 
her own will, may not feel many desires that 
are quite different from what the love of God 
would inspire ; but she fights against them, she 
wishes not to have them, and, if she is taken 
by surprise and gives way for a moment, she is 
sorry for having done so immediately after, 
and thus she prevents those desires from get- 
ting into her will, and from having any very 
perceptible influence upon her actions. But 
the unmortified Religious retains those desires, 
and finds so much pleasure in them, that she is 
unwilling to fight against them. Consequently 
where they are, her love of God grows weak, 
and her life loses in great measure its super- 
natural character. S)ie is often so eager for 
earthly consolations, that she loses sight of her 
eternal reward, and thus it is that her own will 
confines her to earth, deprives her of heavenly 
desires, and fills her with the idea of doing as 
other people do, who make no secret of look- 
ing for earthly consolations as the reward of 
their actions. 

We can easily see from this how it is that 
our own will makes us "• more desirous of glory 



Our Own Will, 179 

than of virtue." In the old pagan times, peo- 
ple were generally persuaded that the noblest 
object for which man could strive was glory. 
This idea is so attractive to our nature, that it 
had no difficulty in finding numbers of adhe- 
rents in every age. It was not till our Divine 
Lord came down upon earth that m.en knew 
that it is a good thing to be despised and per- 
secuted and calumniated. Even now, after we 
have learned at least the first principles of the 
great lesson of Christian humility and self- 
sacrifice, we must still keep fast hold of divine 
grace, or the old idea of earthly glory will 
come back upon us in some shape or other, 
and will do all in its power to make us yield 
to its influence. It seems almost ridiculous to 
say that a Religious who has bound herself to 
live in poverty and obedience should be on 
her guard against earthly glory ; and yet the 
warning is by no means unnecessary, for, if a Re- 
ligious does not mortify her own will, she must 
only expect to suffer as other people do/ in 
whom nature often gets the upper hand of 
grace. When the supernatural is sacrificed for 
the sake of following our own will, there must 
be a proportionate degradation of our actions, 
which affects, not merely the acts themselves 
at the moment of performance, but also their 
results or consequences. These results, in 



i8o Otir Own V/ilL 

which the supernatural element is wanting, are 
transitory, uncertain, and unable to satisfy the 
longings of the will ; yet the will, during its 
period of perversity, persists in seeking them, 
because it has narrowed itself down to mere 
natural things, it forms only natural desires and 
directs its own acts and the acts of the other 
faculties merely to self-gratification. Thus it 
happens that, no matter how little a Religious 
can hope for in the way of earthly glory, the 
desire of that glory may easily become the mo- 
tive of many of her actions, when she ceases to 
mortify her ow^n will. Her life then becomes 
a constant hypocrisy. With the outward ap- 
pearance of desiring only to please God, she is 
in reality doing all she can to earn the praise 
of men ; the virtues of the Religious Life have 
no value in her sight, except in so far as they 
can help to gratify her inordinate vanity, and 
she takes all the good out of them by the un- 
worthy motive that she has in practising them. 
If she is apparently strict in the outward prac- 
tice of poverty, it is not that she may heap up 
treasure in heaven, but that she may enjoy the 
good opinion of her Sisters and Superiors here 
on earth ; if she is regular at prayers and in 
choir, she conceives a great esteem of herself, 
and expects that others should look upon her 
as very virtuous; in a word, her desire of glory 



Our Own Will. i8i 

is sufficient to spoil her best actions and to 
render them worthless in the sight of God. 
Besides that, she is guilty of a great injustice 
by using the choicest gifts of God as a means 
of robbing Him of the praise and glory that 
are due to Him alone. The virtues of the 
Religious Life are the outward expressions of 
the special love of Jesus Christ for those to 
whom He gives the grace of Vocation. He 
places all His Spouses on earth in such a posi- 
tion that they may practise every day the vir- 
tues which are most pleasing to His Sacred 
Heart. The vows of poverty, chastity, and 
obedience furnish to the Religious Life an un- 
ceasing source of supernatural motives, by 
which the soul may be adorned with countless 
acts of virtue that would be exceedingly diffi- 
cult, if not in:ipossible in the world. Who 
shall say how much the Almighty God fore- 
saw in the foundation of the Catholic Church, 
that His external glory would be increased by 
the practice of the virtues of the Religious 
Life ? If there was anything that could bring 
consolation to the afflicted soul of our Divine 
Lord in His agony in the garden, it must 
surely have been the foreknowledge that, to 
the very end of time, there would be always in 
His Church some faithful souls whose whole 
desire would be to imitate Him as perfectly 



1 82 Oiir Own WilL 

as possible, and who would, to that end, cut 
themselves off from every earthly tie in order 
to devote themselves completely to His ser- 
vice. Surely we can easily imagine that He, 
in the midst of His bitter agony, looked for- 
ward to the many faithful Religious who would 
follow in His footsteps, by means of the vir- 
tues of their holy state. These virtues must, 
then, have a special value in His sight ; they 
must represent the most precious fruits of His 
passion and death, and therefore, they must 
have quite a special part to perform in increas- 
ing the external honor and glory of God. The 
acts of a good and mortified Religious have 
about them a peculiar flavor of the earthly life 
of Jesus Christ, and they take a place in the 
scheme of Divine Providence that no act of 
any other rational creature can occupy. 

The selfish and unmortified Religious, who is 
fond of her own will, robs the Almighty of all 
this honor and glory, as far as she may do so, 
and seeks to secure for herself an empty glory, 
which can do her no good, and wdiich will only 
serve to make her more inclined to follow her 
own will. But how is she to know that she is 
in this state? We are all, generally speaking, 
tempted to vainglory, and few of us are able to 
repress altogether a feeling of satisfaction if 
others praise our conduct. Even good Reli- 



Our Own Will, 183 

gious who are doing their best may feel temp- 
tations in this direction ; how are we to distin- 
guish between temptation and sin, between an 
evil natural inclination that we keep under by- 
divine grace and by a right use of the will, 
and an evil habit, contrary to the spirit of the 
Religious Life and its virtues, that we deliber- 
ately admit? Very often, indeed, the distinc- 
tion is a difificult one to make, and we are 
forced, fortunately for ourselves, to submit 
altogether to the judgment of our Superiors 
and our Confessor. I say, fortunately, because 
that submission is sure to keep us from practi- 
cal error, while it relieves us of a great deal of 
responsibility. But there are certain signs of 
an unmortified w^ill which seeks its own glory, 
that Superiors can easily detect in the outward 
conduct of their Sisters. 

One of these signs is a constant thirst for 
praise, w^hich betrays itself, in spite of all 
efforts to conceal it, by a spirit of indifference 
and carelessness in our actions, because we 
think that our Superiors and Sisters do not 
take sufficient notice of us, or that they are not 
concerned enough about our welfare. When 
this spirit takes possession of us, we try to 
push ourselves forward on every possible occa- 
sion, we cannot bear to be left in the back- 
[ground, we are extremely and inordinately 



1 84 Our Own Will, 

sensitive to the least sign of neglect; and as 
in such circumstances we are never out of 
trouble, we find a secret pleasure in talking of 
our troubles, we make much of them, cherish 
them, turn them into a grievance, and lay the 
whole blame of them upon others. In this 
way we pander to our thirst for glory, by get- 
ting a good opinion of ourselves, looking on 
ourselves as martyrs suffering from unjust 
treatment, and by putting ourselves at last 
into such a state that we force our Superiors 
or Sisters to take special notice of us. Hence 
we get affected and unnatural in manner, while 
our piety dwindles down into mere sentiment, 
that cannot long withstand the rude shock of 
temptation. 

Another sign of a will that is " more desir- 
ous of glory than of virtue" is its impatience of 
reproof. This impatience is something more 
than the mere outcome of inborn pride, from 
Avhich every descendant of Adam suffers : it is 
that outcome of pride fostered by self-will and 
by the neglect of manyprecious graces by the 
help of which it might have been overcome. 
In fact, the self-willed Religious resents reproof 
as an injury ; she v/ill not be persuaded that it i& 
necessary for her, or, if she is forced by the 
light of reason to acknowledge its necessity in 
general, she always makes an exception of each 



Our Oiun Will. 185 

particular instance in which reproof is adminis- 
tered to herself ; she easily persuades herself 
that her Superiors have some grudge against 
her, that their corrections are not made in the 
spirit of charity, or that they are mistaken with 
regard to her faults. Thus corrections do her 
no good, and she deprives herself of the good 
effects of one of the greatest external graces 
that God bestows on those who devote them- 
selves to the Religious Life. Under these cir- 
cumstances the thirst for glory goes on increas- 
ing, its signs become more manifest, and the 
poor Religious who gives way to it goes farther 
and farther away from the perfection of her 
state ; for how could she attain perfection 
when she is more anxious to secure the praise 
of men than to please God by practising the 
virtues of her state with a pure intention? 

Finally, the thirst for glory manifests itself 
by consequences, fraught with danger to the 
peace and well-being of the community, which 
sooner or later are sure to follow. When a 
Religious gets a wrong and distorted idea of 
her position, when she forgets her obligations 
to God and to the Church, and gives way to 
her foolish desires for praise, she finds herself, 
in a short time, isolated, as it were, from her 
Sisters ; she must be conscious that she has not 
the same object in view that they have, and 



1 86 Our Own VVilL 

that the spirit of community has lost its hold 
upon her. Even if there were several members 
of the community affected with the same inor- 
dinate desire, the sense of isolation must still, 
in the beginning at least, force itself upon 
them, because when v/e seek ourselves in any 
shape or form, we practically separate our- 
selves from our fellow-mortals, by setting our- 
selves up on a pedestal of fancied superiority, 
and expecting all creatures to bow down and do 
us homage. But this sense of isolation is not 
a satisfactor}^ one ; it throws us too much upon 
ourselves, and leaves us no refuge from our 
own weakness. So that we are forced to look 
for consolation and support from others. It 
goes without saying that we value only that 
particular kind of consolation and support that 
chimes in with our own ideas, and helps to 
satisfy our thirst for praise. Thus it happens 
that, when a Religious becomes '' desirous of 
glory'* through following her own will, she will 
be quite prepared to act the hypocrite with her 
Superiors and to get up parties amongst her 
Sisters. This she can do by the help of that nat- 
ural cunning which our unfortunate pride easily 
arms itself with ; and if her Sisters and Superi- 
ors are not careful, she will succeed in cajoling 
them or playing upon their weaknesses, until 
she gains her point — often a very worthless, in- 



Our Own Will. 187 

significant point, some petty idea, some opinion 
that she attaches value to, for no earthly reason 
but because it is her opinion. Pity it is that a 
Spouse of Jesus Christ, who is called by Him 
to do great things for the Church, who is under 
the special protection of His Virgin Mother, 
should let herself sink so low as to employ the 
weapons of vain and frivolous women of the 
world for vain and frivolous objects ! 

To cure this inordinate thirst for glory, a 
Religious must remember that it is founded 
on falsehood and that it leads to rebellion. 
Nothing has less foundation than the excel- 
lence we fancy we possess of ourselves ; nothing 
so weakens the power of lawful and salutary 
authority over us as to imagine that we are 
better than our Superiors, or that they, al- 
though lawfully appointed, are not good enough 
to direct us. When we are possessed by a 
desire for glory we cannot bear to think that 
we have faults, nor can we listen to the admo- 
nitions of those who would show us our faults 
and help us to correct them ; so that we are 
likely often to resist authority and to entail 
upon ourselves the dreadful consequences of 
despising God in the persons of our Superiors: 
'' He that despiseth you, despiseth Me,'* says 
Christ. What more foolhardy thing can there 
be than to dare the anger of God for the sake 
of human praise ? 



1 88 Our Own Will 

And what is human praise worth to a Relig- 
ious? It is certainly the most useless thing she 
can desire. She is not in the way of being bene- 
fited by any worldly advantage ; the greatest 
treasures of earth could not make her one bit 
richer or happier ; she cannot aspire to a high 
position in the world, nor can she hope to be in- 
vested with any great earthly dignity. Why 
then should she offend God and follow her own 
will for the sake of an empty breath of air ; for 
all human praise is nothing more to a Spouse of 
Christ. Let her then strive to please God alone, 
whose praise is all in all to her, and when her 
Superiors or Sisters encourage her, by show- 
ing her where grace has helped her to over- 
come the difficulties and slowness of nature, 
let her give all the glory to God, and He, in 
His infinite goodness, will give her all the 
merit. 

Another evil characterstic of our own will, 
closely connected wath the one we have just 
been considering, is that it '' loves reputation 
more than a good conscience." When self- 
will rules in us, we are "not satisfied with mere 
praise, we wish to stand high in the opinion of 
others ; the spirit of falsehood takes such pos- 
session of us, that \ve wish to infect others 
wuth it in the same degree as ourselves, so that 
the excellence vv^e fancy we possess may ap- 



Our Own Will, 189 

pear real in their eyes. This perversion of the 
will vitiates our motives and intentions to a 
very great extent. It goes rather deeper into 
our motives than the mere thirst for praise. 
When we wish others merely to praise us, we 
may often be contented with a few outward 
signs of approbation ; but when self-will strikes 
deeper root in us it prompts us not to be con- 
tent with mere outward praise unless it is sin- 
cerely meant, nor to be satisfied with mere 
external signs of approbation, unless we see 
that they come from one whom we have suc- 
ceeded in persuading of our excellence. It 
matters not that this excellence has no real 
existence in us, as long as we can believe that 
others look upon us as good, or talented, or 
pious, we trouble little about the reality, for 
our principal motive is, not to please God, but 
to gratify ourselves, not to do His will, but to 
satisfy our own so as to make the opinions 
and ideas of others subservient to it. 

A Religious who gets into this state lives 
a life of continued hypocrisy. She constantly 
strives to appear what she knows she is not, 
and, as she devotes herself to cultivating the 
mere outward appearance of goodness she loses 
gradually all desire for the real, substantial 
and interior goodness which alone is pleasing 
to God. As a consequence of this hypocrisy, 



I go Our Own WilL 

she often sacrifices her peace of mind to gain 
the good opinion of others, she is guilty of 
many abuses and breaches of ReHgious dis- 
cipHne, in matters that cannot help her inor- 
dinate self-love, and, if a strict watch is not 
kept over her, she allows herself to fall into 
many worldly habits and customs, that wilh 
by degrees, sap and undermine her spiritual 
life, until at last she becomes a Religious 
merely in name and garb. 

A becrinnin^ of this dansrerous form of self- 
will may be traced in those w^ho, habitually 
and not from mere forgetfulness, refuse to 
acknowledge their small faults in chapter, or 
v\^ho try to escape the various little humilia- 
tions and penances enjoined upon them by 
the Constitutions of their order, or by the com- 
mand of their Superioress. The founders of 
Religious Orders knew well what a foe to 
perfection our own will is, and how ready it 
is to seize upon every opportunity of frustrat- 
ing God's grace in our souls, and therefore they 
wisely provided efficacious protection against 
its assaults, in the shape of those little pen- 
ances and humiliations; so that, as we have 
it in our power to make frequent and almost 
daily use of them, we may thus acquire the 
salutary habit of contending with our own 
will and defeating it in such a manner that we 



Our Own WilL 191 

can have outward, sensible proof of our victory. 
The good and zealous Religious will there- 
fore be very exact in practising the various 
mortifications prescribed for her, and she may 
rest assured that they will help her, in no 
inconsiderable degree, to attain to the perfec- 
tion of her state; she, on the contrary, who is 
carried away by self-will to such a degree that 
she ** loves reputation more than a good con- 
science," will try to avoid all those things and 
will thereby forfeit much merit in the sight of 
God, and will place herself in great danger of 
losing the spirit of Religion and of being en- 
slaved by the false maxims and lying doctrines 
that keep. the world in the bondage of Satan. 

Yet a moment*s reflection should suffice to 
cure a Religious of this kind of folly. Of what 
use to her is the empty bubble of reputation 
that she strives for, and for which she sacri- 
fices the precious treasures of the virtues of 
her state? Will it perhaps help her to die 
well? We have seen that it is capable of em- 
bittering her life, and that it can deprive her 
of peace of mind ; will it at least soften the 
anguish of her last moments or mitigate the 
terrors of death ? But how could that be ? 
Men cannot help us in death, so that their 
good opinion can then be of no use to us, nor 
can they injure us then, so that we need not 



192 



Otir Own VVilL 



be afniid of losing anything if they have a bad 
opinion of us. It is God alone whom we need 
dread in that solemn moment, it is to Hini 
alone that we can fly for support and consola- 
tion. Bat if we neglect Him during life, how 
can we hope that He will be propitious to us 
in death? If we are so anxious for the praise 
and good opinion of our fellow-creatures, that 
we do not scruple to wrong the Almighty God 
and deprive Him of our service, how can we 
expect that His infinite justice will be favor- 
able to us when the time comes for Him to 
judge us? And that time is approaching very 
quickly. The day of the Lord is at hand, 
when human praise and flattery will not be 
able to excite in us even the least movement 
of self-complacency, for we shall be so over- 
whelmed with the Divine Majesty that we 
shall look upon all that is not God, or that is 
not sought for and desired solely for His sake, 
as dust and ashes. 



Our Own Will. 193 



CHAPTER XIV. 

OUR OWN WILL LS MORE MISERABLE WHEN 
ENJOYING THE OBJECTS OF ITS DESIRES, 
THAN WHEN IT IS WITHOUT THEM. 

A COMMON subject of regret, amongst 
worldly people, is the time of youth and 
childhood. They say, ^' Oh ! would that I 
could live that happy time over again ! The 
very remembrance of it excites a lively desire 
in one to go back to the time when I was full 
of hope and energy, when I looked forward to 
everything with joyous anticipation, when I 
welcomed every little change as the forerunner 
of something still more brilliant and advanta- 
geous. But alas! these desires are fruitless, 
and I must bid adieu forever to the past.'' 
This vain and useless longing for an impossi- 
bility shows how unreasonable the desires of 
our unmortified will can be, and how they 
stop at no absurdity, once the will forms and 
adheres to them. It is to this as to their im- 
mediate cause that we may trace most of the 



194 Our Ow7t Will. 

evils that afiflict humanity. When people are 
content with their lot, that is to say, when 
they keep their desires in check, they are able 
to enjoy the blessings that Providence bestow^s 
on them ; but when their desires carry them 
away beyond their condition, then they are, 
as it were, torn asunder by conflicting influ- 
ences, and they must experience all the dis- 
content, unhappiness, and misery that unsatis- 
fied longings invariably cause. Even the old 
pagan philosophers were persuaded of this 
truth, and therefore they tried to reduce their 
desires to the smallest possible compass. It is 
related of Socrates that he once said, on seeing 
a grand procession pass by, in which many 
precious objects were carried, *^ How many 
things there are that I do not require !" The 
story of Diogenes and his tub is well-known, 
and does not require to be repeated. So that 
even the natural light of reason tells us that if 
we wish to save ourselves much useless un- 
easiness and misery, we must restrain our de- 
sires; that is to say, our desires for natural and 
earthly things, for there should be no bounds 
to our desire to possess God and to do His 
will perfectly in all things. And here was the 
great defect of the old pagan philosophers: 
they mortified their desires for the riches and 
comforts of life, but they had nothing satisfac- 



Our Own Will. 195 

tory to replace them, or at least they so far 
neglected the natural law, the unwritten law 
of God in their own consciences, that they be- 
came filled with pride and self-conceit ; in vain 
should we seek for anything like the example 
of our Divine Lord in their lives. Hence St. 
Jerome says, in his homily on the 19th Chap- 
ter of St. Matthew, '' Christ does not say, Be- 
cause you have left all things, you shall be 
seated on thrones, and shall judge the tribes 
of Israel ; because Crates the philosopher did 
that, and many others too despised riches : but 
He says. Because you have followed me : for 
therein lies the true mark of an Apostle and a 
believer." Thus, the light of faith supplies 
what is wanting to human reason, and while 
the latter tells us that if we wish to enjoy life, 
we must restrain our desires, the former shows 
us the real emptiness and deceitfulness of 
earthly things, and teaches us to aspire with 
all the force of our will to the possession of 
eternal life. 

The devout Religious, the true Spouse of 
Jesus Christ, easily yields to the influence of 
faith in this respect. She is so thoroughly 
convinced of everything that the Church 
teaches, that she uses her faith constantly as 
a mighty weapon to restrain her will and to 
overcome every desire of her nature that is in 



196 Our Own Will, 

the smallest degree opposed to her high Voca- 
tion. She thus leads a truly mortified life, 
and, besides " leaving all things," she follows 
Christ and becomes a sort of Apostle in the 
convent, by her close imitation of the all- 
perfect and mortified life of her Divine Spouse. 
On the contrary, the unmortified Religious, who 
loves herself more than she does her Heavenly 
Spouse, follows her own will, in spite of the 
teaching of faith, and fritters her life away in 
idle and useless desires, thereby bringing on 
herself many miseries, of which she has no 
right to know anything at all. For the desires 
of our own will, as opposed to obedience and 
the will of God, are prompted either by per- 
sonal vanity, or by the devil, the father of 
lies, or by a worldly spirit ; whatever source 
they come from, they can only deceive and 
mislead us, and while they buoy us up with 
hopes of happiness before the time comes for 
their fulfilment, when that time really arrives 
we are sure to be bitterly disappointed, and 
to find that the possession of the desired ob- 
ject does not give us any satisfaction, or at 
most only a very transitory and uncertain 
one. 

If our will is set in motion by personal van- 
ity or self-esteem, so that we desire something 
to support our idea of our own excellence, it is 



I 



Ottr Own Will. 197 

evident that we are doomed to disappointment 
and misery, unless we mortify our will and 
trample our vanity under foot. Because the 
excellence on w^hich we found those acts of 
the will is purely imaginary, it does not exist 
at all ; more than that, the effort that we 
make to suppose it is directed against the 
teaching of the Church, and our own inward 
conviction as Catholics. We know that we 
have nothing good in us unless what we have 
received from God, and therefore, that any de- 
sires having for their object an excellence 
Avhich we try to consider as our own, without 
referring it to God, must be unjust to Him 
and injurious to ourselves. Even if we do ac- 
knowledge that we have received everything 
from God, yet every wilful desire of self-esteem 
founded upon God's gifts is false and sinful, 
because it deprives God of the praise and 
homage due to Him for His liberality and 
goodness to us. Any one might receive the 
gift that God has bestowed on me, many have 
received far more precious ones than I ; would 
it not then be very foolish for me to extol my- 
self on account of such things, and, if I com- 
mit that act of folly, what can I expect but 
misery and unhappiness? 

Again, if our will is impelled to action by the 
wiles and deceits of the devil, and obeys the 



198 Our Own Will, 

impulse, we prepare a vast amount of misery 
and suffering for ourselves. The devil makes 
use of the sensitive and lower part of our na- 
ture as a weapon against the rational and 
superior part. He knows how to excite pas- 
sions, to stir up desires, to fill the imagination 
with selfish and worldly ideas, by holding up 
before us some imaginary good or happiness 
which we might gain by yielding to his temp- 
tations. His object is to ruin us eternally, but 
he carefully conceals that in the beginning. 
He knows that, generally speaking, to propose 
anything grievously sinful to a Reh'gious would 
at once fill her with horror, and therefore he is 
content at first w^ith seizing hold of some weak 
point in her character, by which he may all the 
more easily influence her will. Thus, for 
instance, if she is disposed to value highly her 
own natural powder of judging character, and 
gives way to this weakness, he easily leads her 
on, first to criticise, and then to find fault with 
her Sisters or Superiors, until in the end he 
brings her so far that she lives in open and 
constant violation of the duties of sisterly char- 
ity and of her vow of obedience, and instead 
of sharing in the community life of her Sis- 
ters in the spirit of humility and unselfishness, 
she looks upon herself as a privileged person 
in the convent, for whom the Rule and Con- 



\ 



Oil}' Own Will. 199 

stitutions were not made, and who is not 
bound to acknowledge any Superior but the 
vagaries of her own will. It is evident that the 
Religious who thus allows the devil to deceive 
and mislead her is in a most miserable and un- 
happy state. No matter what class of tempta- 
tions or what natural weakness the devil makes 
use of to turn her aside from the path of per- 
fection, she will find nothing but bitterness 
and falsehood, as the reward for having be- 
lieved the suggestions of the father of lies. 
Not only is she tortured with the stings of re- 
morse, but also the very fulfilment of the 
desires that carried her away from her duty 
remind her of graces neglected, of a Vocation 
to which she is unfaithful, of a great dignity 
conferred on her by God, which she has de- 
despised and trampled under foot. Therefore, 
as it is impossible for anything good to come 
from the spirit of evil, so it is impossible for a 
Religious who obeys the desires he excites in 
her to find anything but misery and unhappi- 
ness as the result of her folly. 

Perhaps the most dangerous source of the 
desires of our own will is a worldly spirit. At all 
events, it is pretty clear that a Religious who 
renounces the world heart and soul, outwardly 
and inwardly, will have little difficulty in over- 
coming the temptations of the devil or the 



200 Ou7' Oi^ni IViiL 

movements of self-love, because she is so thor- 
oughly under the influence of the Religious 
Life that she is almost forced to make use of 
the powerful helps it affords her, so that she 
can combat those two enemies, as if they were 
foreigners invading her own lawfully acquired 
territoi-y. Neither the temptations of the devil 
nor the movements of self-love can ever gain 
firm footing in the soul of the Religious who 
is filled with the spirit of her Vocation, But 
where she falls aw^ay from that spirit, the rival 
influence steps in, the least retreat she makes 
from the spirit of her Vocation is an advance 
which the spirit of the world makes upon her; 
and there is no other alternative. We must 
either progress or retrograde in the way of per- 
fection ; there is no such thing as standing still. 
The two spirits, that of Jesus Christ as dis- 
played in the Evangelical Counsels, and that of 
the world as shown in the efforts it makes to 
render these Counsels impracticable — these tw^o 
spirits are in deadly antagonism to each other, 
there can be neither peace nor truce between 
them. Xow, suppose a Religious inclines, 
though never so little, to the spirit of the world, 
is it not evident that she then invites the enemy 
into her soul, and offers him the possession of 
the territory which she has compelled her true 
friend and ally, the spirit of her Vocation, to 



Our Own WilL 201 

evacuate ? And what a disastrous and insidi- 
ous warfare the invader can then wage upon 
her peace of mind ! How he befools and de- 
ceives her, until she gets so infatuated with 
worldly desires, that her will is almost ab- 
sorbed by them, and obedience to her Superiors 
is the last thing she thinks of ! Alas for the 
Religious who gets into this state ! For she is 
a Religious only in name and dress, but in real- 
ity and by reason of the perversion of her will, 
which influences her whole nature, she is a 
woman of the world. And her conduct bears 
witness to her true character : she is given to 
fault-finding, to criticising, to time-serving ; 
she is false and cunning in her speech, affected 
and unnatural in her actions; she judges v/ith- 
out truth, and condemns without mercy ; she 
trespasses on the rights of her Sisters and Su- 
periors with the utmost effrontery, and does 
not scruple to treat them with disrespect and 
uncharity. There is not much difficulty in de- 
tecting in a Religious the traces of a worldly 
spirit. For the business of the world is to 
flatter our natural desires, and to encourage 
them as much as possible. But when it comes 
to the fulfilment of those desires, what misery, 
what a disappointment, what a downfall is 
there ! She who was almost in possession of 
Heaven has given it up for the vile things of 



202 Our Own Will. 

earth ; she who was inebriated with the sweet- 
ness of the supernatural truths, infused into 
her soul by God, feeds herself with the filthy- 
garbage of worldly cunning and deceit; she 
whose wall was strengthened by a great and 
special grace against all the powers of evil, has 
made herself a slave to the very enemy whom 
she declared unceasing w^ar against when she 
entered the convent. Hence the worldly Re- 
ligious betrays the spirit that animates her, be- 
cause she cannot conceal the restlessness and 
agitation that worldly desires cause her, nor can 
she hide the unhappiness and bitter disappoint- 
ment that the fulfilment of such desires always 
brings with it. 

But, it may be urged, is it quite true that 
self-willed Religious have a monopoly of misery 
in the convent ? Have good and mortified Re- 
ligious nothing to suffer ? Is there no danger, 
in fact, of attributing misery, unhappiness, or 
restlessness to the wTong cause, at least some- 
times, if we invariably put these tilings down 
to an unmortified will? I answer without hesi- 
tation, there is no danger of a mistake in such 
cases, for there is a peculiar mark about the 
suffering caused by our own W'ill, by which it 
may be easily recognized and at once attrib- 
uted to its proper cause. It is quite true that 
good Religious have to suffer ; how could they 



Our Own Will. 20 



o 



conquer their own will otherwise? If the 
** word of God is a sharp sword " that searches 
out the inmost recesses of our nature with its 
penetrating point, if it tells us to hate our- 
selves and everything belonging to us for 
Christ's sake, if it impresses on us the necessity 
of doing constant violence to ourselves, who 
shall say that that sacred word can be fulfilled 
in us without causing us many a pang? For 
our nature feels and tries to rebel against the 
violence we do it. But what we suffer in that 
way is more than compensated for by the 
many advantages we gain. The merchant, in- 
tent on gain, travels over sea and land ; he 
spares himself no trouble, shirks no inconve- 
nience, provided only he can add to his wealth ; 
he suffers much anxiety, but if at the end he 
finds that his efforts have been successful, he 
makes light of all his trouble, and forgets it in 
the joy that he feels at seeing his wealth in- 
creased. The good Religious is far more eager 
for heavenly treasures than ever merchant was 
for earthly ones ; like St. Paul, she thinks that 
all the trials and sufferings of this life, and all 
the trouble it costs her to mortify her will 
" are as nothing compared to the future glory 
which shall be revealed in her,'' nay, even she 
rejoices in those sufferings, knowing that they 
are the means by which God will purify her 



204 Oicr Own Will, 

heart from every worldly and selfish affection. 
Her suffering, therefore, has nothing of bitter- 
ness or discontent, it is rather the foundation 
of the great contentment and peace that fills 
her soul and makes every duty of her life easy 
and agreeable to her in spite of the opposition 
of nature. But it is quite the contrary with 
the Religious of unmortified will. What she 
suffers is the result of perversity. The desires 
of her own will have led her astray away from 
God, and have taught her to seek for things 
that she formally renounced in her profession ; 
so that the knowledge of her own unfaithful- 
ness must add an element of bitterness to the 
discontent she experiences in the very fulfil- 
ment of her desires. Thus, she suffers as 
worldlings do; without resignation to God's 
will, without hope in His mercy, without any 
effort to abandon that which caused her suffer- 
ings, nay, she is always ready to throw the 
blame of her wretched state on her Sisters and 
Superiors, rather than acknowledge that her 
own will is in fault. There is no difficulty, then, 
in tracing her misery to its source ; it comes 
from self-will, and bears about it the unmistak- 
able marks of its origin. 

But it may be said, Surely this picture is too 
highly colored : if self-w^ill brought nothing but 
misery, there would soon be an end to it, for 



Our Own Will. 205 

we have such a strong natural desire for happi- 
ness that we are quite ready to avoid anything 
that causes misery and suffering. Therefore, 
although self-w^ill is not a good thing in a Re- 
ligious, yet it must bring her some satisfaction, 
some contentment, when its desires are ful- 
filled. 

No doubt it does bring her satisfaction and 
contentment — such satisfaction as Pharao felt 
when the plagues of Egypt were decimating 
his people and threatening his own existence; 
such contentment as he experienced when his 
obdurate will drove him out in pursuit of 
God's chosen people and hurried him on to 
destruction. The Religious who is obstinate 
in following her own will is like Pharao. She 
refuses to submit to the '* signs and wonders'* 
of grace that God is constantly working around 
her, to convince her that His will is contained 
in the Rule and Constitutions of her Order and 
in the authority of her Superiors, and she must 
only expect that, like Pharao, after suffering 
many miseries, she will at length become ob- 
durate like him, until her spiritual life is 
drowned and utterly extinguished by the 
waves of tepidity and worldliness. May God 
preserve every Spouse of His Only Begotten 
Son from this great evil, for a deep and terri- 
ble damnation awaits those who trample under 



2 CO Our Own WilL 

foot the immense and precious graces that ac- 
company a religious Vocation, unless the 
mercy of God steps in by a miracle of grace, 
to save them from the destruction which 
their own will would certainly bring upon 
them. 

To save ourselves all this misery and 
wretchedness, and the rapid hardening of con- 
science that must follow, we have only to take 
our desires away from this woful world and 
from everything belonging to it. What, in 
the name of truth and right reason, has the 
world ever given to us that was worth keep- 
ing ; and, on the other hand, have we ever 
had reason to regret or to repent of having 
received any of the supernatural graces and 
gifts that God bestowed on us during our 
lives? Nothing can come from God but what 
is good and true and conducive to our happi- 
ness, whereas the world has nothing to offer us 
but misery and falsehood and lying promises 
of happiness that are sure to end in bitter dis- 
appointment. And there should be no neces- 
sity of argument to convince a Religious of this. 
By the very nature of her holy state she be- 
longs more to heaven than to earth ; the 
Spouse of her soul has set His seal upon her 
and separated her from the wickedness and 
fascinations and allurements of the world. His 



Our Own Will, 207 

own deadly enemy. What difficulty then can 
she have to free herself completely from the 
trammels of earthly desires, and to desire only 
the things that are eternal, heavenly, and 
supernatural? Would to God that we could 
be eaten up and consumed with the intensity 
of our longing for the full and perfect accom- 
plishment of the divine will in us! Then, in- 
deed, should we have no room in our hearts 
for earthly desires, because all earthly things 
would seem to us as dust and ashes, com- 
pared to the eternal things to which we 
aspire. 

The last characteristic of our own will that 
we propose considering is that ^' experience 
increases its misery/' This requires no proof, 
because it is self-evident; it admits of no ex- 
ception, because it is founded on the universal 
truth of the Christian's Vocation by baptism 
to be a child of God, a co-heir v/ith Jesus 
Christ, and consequently, of his obligation *' to 
live in this w^orld as if he were not of it, and 
to use the things of this world as if he used 
them not." Prceterit enim ftgura hujus rniindi — 
" the figure of this world passeth away;" it has 
no existence for the true Christian except as a 
place of banishment, or a gloomy prison in 
which the glorious light of eternity is seen 
only ^^ darkly, and as in a glass." And who 



2o8 Our Own WilL 

ever confined his desires to the walls of a 
dungeon, who ever looked forward to happi- 
ness in a place of banishment, separated from 
his friends, at a distance from his true country? 
Yet that inconceivable folly is perpetrated by 
those Christians who consume their lives in 
worldly desires ; and worse than all, it is com- 
mitted by Religious who follow their own will, 
and who refuse to learn from what experience 
teaches them. 

If it is true that sin is the only cause of mis- 
ery, that if there were no sin in the world neither 
would there be any woe or unhappiness, what 
greater folly can there be than for us to per- 
petuate the cause of ev^il in ourselves by 
follown'ng our own will ? For sin is the work 
of our own will ; we have every right to claim 
it as our own handiwork and creation: nor 
could sin exist unless there was an intelligent 
\\\\\ so perverse as to oppose itself to the wise 
laws and fatherly commands of its Creator. 
God. in giving us the power to sin, did not 
give it to us that we should sin, but rather 
that we should intensify every act of love and 
sen^ice that we render to Him during our 
lives. Nay, He has even mercifully decreed 
that as the proper use of our liberty will cer- 
tainly bring us peace and joy in the Lord in 
this life, and eternal gloiy in the next, so the 



Our Ow7i Will, 2og 

abuse of it is sure to be followed by restless- 
ness and misery and the torture of unsatisfied 
longings, in order that we may dread the 
eternal torments to which our own will would 
certainly lead us if w^e followed its behests. 
Thus, according to the immutable decree of 
Almighty Providence, the self-willed Religious 
must find that the more her inordinate desires 
are gratified, the more unhappy she becomes: 
the longer she perseveres in following her own 
will, the farther does she recede from the only 
source of peace and contentment; and the 
more she is agitated by earthly desires, the 
less is she able to taste or appreciate that 
heavenly peace which *' passeth all human 
understanding,*' and which is given only to 
those who know how to mortify their desires 
that they may desire God alone. 

Why do we then insist so much and so 
often on having our own will ? Can we 
fathom the depths of perversity and folly into 
which we sink when we deliberately throw 
away peace and contentment and joy in the 
Lord, for misery and disappointment and the 
stings of an uneasy conscience? Alas for 
poor human nature ! We suffer from the dis- 
ease and know that we suffer, yet we are 
afraid to apply the remedy. We shrink from 
the iTiortification of our selfish desires, al- 



2IO OlC7' Ozu7i IVzlL 

though the very gratification of them makes 
our hfe a misery to us. Is it not clear that we 
are wanting in courage, that '' we tremble with 
fear where there is no cause for fear?" — illic tre- 
pidaverunt tiiiiore ubi ncn erat ti)nor. Has God 
ever failed us yet, that we should doubt of His 
power or readiness to assist us ? The vows 
that we make, the holy state to which He has 
called us, the life of community that we lead 
in the convent — all these things are so many 
ratifications and repetitions of the promises so 
often made by God to support and help those 
who call upon Him. in the day of trial. Can 
God do any more than He has already done 
to give us courage and confidence? May we 
not see, every day of our lives, examples of 
the might and power of His grace over every 
passion and evil propensity of our nature? 
The very fact that we have been able to give 
up the world and to persevere so long in 
religion is in itself a standing proof that with 
the grace of God there is nothing we may not 
undertake and accomplish. The way is then 
clear before us; let us advance on it coura- 
geously. And if v\'e have reason to believe 
that we follow our own will too much, if we 
can detect the marks of that great foe to 
perfection in our actions, let us make up our 
minds, once for all, to spare no effort, shirk no 



Our Own WilL 211 

sacrifice, avoid no mortification that will help 
us to give our will completely to God, so that 
we may hand over to Him, in the persons of 
the Superiors He has placed over us, all the 
responsibility of our lives and actions. 



THE END. 



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i 



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APPROBATIONS. 
From the Pastoral Letter of Right Rev. S. V. RYAN, D.D., Bishop of Buffalo 

'* The " Christian Mother " I would like to see in the hands of 

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4* JOHN McEVILLY, 
Bishop of Galway and Coadjutor of Tuam. 

''. . . The Httle book should be introduced into every Catholic 
family, for the instruction of parents as well as children, wherefore we 
earnestly recommend it. ^ JOHN VERTIN, 

Bishop of Marquette. 

" I am well pleased with it, and would like to see it in the hands of 
every Christian mother. , . . 

^ .-EGIDIUS YUNGER, Bishop of Nesguallyr 

BENZIGER BROTHERS, New York, Cincinnati, and St. Louis. 



A Relic of the Times of Persecution ! 

Meditations for Every Day in tlie Year, 

Collected from different Spiritual Writers and suited for the 
Practice called "QUARTER OF AN HOUR'S SOLI- 
TUDE." Edited by Rev. Roger Baxter, S.J., of 
Georgetown College. It is now re-published and revised 
in the 261st year of Jesuit labor in the United States, by 
Rev, r. Neale, S.J., of St. Inigo's. Md. 

12ino, cloth, red edges, . . • $2«00. 

With a Letter of Approbation from His Grace, the Most Reverend 
Arciibishop of Baltimore. 

This volume of Meditations will prove a treasure to all devout 

souls, ana, on account of its ivealth of material, be found of 

great value to priests in the preparation of Sermons, 



The Meditations in this book have been long in high repute in Eng- 
land. They were originally collected, a long time ago, from the best 
ascetical writers, which were then m existence, and there is hardly a medit- 
tation book of those days which our author has not ransacked in order to 
form this work. Tradition says that this httla book served in an 
eminent degree to keep alive the spirit of their religion among 
the persecuted Catholics of England, for when it was first printed, 
the days of intolerance and religious proscription had not passed away. 
Independently of the intrinsic merit of the book, these associations give it 
some degree of interest which it would not otherwise possess. This book 
'vas a particular favorite with such men as Bishops Challoner 
and Walmsly. ..." 

The book is interesting not only from its origin, but also from the fact 
that it is among the first devotional works published in this country, 
where it owed its appearance to the exertions of the Rev. Roger Baxter, 
S.J., a man conspicuous for his learning, eloquence, and zeal in defence 
of the faith. Though dying at the earty age of thirty-four, he was the 
author of at least two books which earned for him fame in the field 
of polemics; one, "A Series o' Letters between M. B.and Quaero on the 
Tenets of Catholicity," appeared in 1817 ; the other, "The 5lost Import- 
ant Tenets of the Roman Catholic Ch irch. Fairly Explained." was pub- 
lished three years later, and even to this day is recognized as a standard 
controversial work. 

This present volume contains Father Baxter's Preface which is certain 
to excite attention, as it embraces the history of the book, a^ well as the 
method laid down by its author. 

The Approbations given to Father Baxter's edition, and a transcript of 
the old copyright, are also included, as likely to prove interesting to the 
bibliographer. 

BENZIGER BROTHERS, New York, Cincinnati, and St. Louis. 



1 



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